•)  i    St.  V  .• ; 


H'^V' 


it"% 


MAR  11  1954 


-iXh    it-kV, 


BL  51  .L6713  1903 
Lotze,  Hermann,  1817-1881 
Outlines  of  the  philosophy 
of  religion 


rK 


LOTZE'S 


Outlines  of  Philosophy 

II 

PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 


OUTLINES 


MAR  11  1954 


v. 


OF  THE 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 


DICTATED   PORTIONS 


OF  THE 


LECTURES  OF  HERMANN  LOTZE 


TRANSLATION    EDITED    BY 

GEORGE   T.    LADD 

PROFESSOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY  IN  YALE  COLLEGE 


BOSTON: 

PT^BLISHED   BY   GINN   &   COMPANY. 

1903 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1885,  by 

GEORGE  T.    LADD. 
in  the  office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


J.  S.  L,usHiNG  &  Co.,  Printers,  115  High  Stkeet,  Boston. 


EDITOR'S    PREFACE. 


-•o«- 


This  translation  of  Lotze's  '  Outlines  of  the 
Philosophy  of  Religion  '  is  made  from  the  German 
of  the  second  edition,  for  the  revision  of  which, 
as  well  as  for  that  of  the  first  German  edition, 
Professor  Rehnisch  of  Gottingen  is  responsible. 
In  preference  to  the  first  edition,  the  second  was 
selected,  because  it  seems  to  be  at  once  more 
compact  (if  that  were  possible)  and  more  compre- 
hensive. It  is  composed  of  the  dictated  portions 
of  the  Lectures  given  in  the  Summer-Semester  of 
1875  and  the  Winter-Semester  of  1878-79.  The 
first  eight  chapters  belong  to  the  earlier  date ; 
and,  in  fact,  the  course  of  1875  closed  with  them. 
It  was  not  until  the  year  1878  that  Lotze  added 
to  this  course  the  instruction  on  Religion  and  Mo- 
rality (Chapter  IX.)  and  on  Dogmas  and  Confessions 
(Chapter  X.). 

In  choosing  this  volume  for  the  second  place  in 
the  series  of  translations  of  these  Outlines,  I  have 
been  guided  to  a  considerable  extent  by  my  own 
convenience  as  a  teacher.  It  will  be  found  to  be 
very  closely  connected  with,  and  indeed  founded 
upon,    the    conclusions    already   made   accessible    in 


vi  editor's    I'REFACE. 


the  translation  of  the  'Outlines  of  Mclaphysic' 
The  riiilosophy  of  Religion  is,  of  course,  primarily 
a  speculative  or  theoretical  treatment  of  the  proofs 
for  the  Being  of  God,  of  his  Attributes,  and  of 
his  Relations  to  the  World  of  matter  and  of  finite 
spirits.  But  Lotze's  metaphysical  thinking  leads 
him  to  the  conclusion  that  the  source  and  centre 
and  sum  of  all  that  Reality  with  which  it  is  the 
business  of  Metaphysic  to  deal,  is  the  Personal 
Absolute  whom  —  to  use  the  lanfruarre  of  Tren- 
delenburg  —  "faith  calls  God."  The  Philosophy 
of  Religion  must  therefore  first  derive  from  Meta- 
physic the  results  of  a  critical  treatment  of  those 
assumptions  concerning  all  that  is  Real,  which 
enter  into  all  experience  ;  it  must  afterwards  dis- 
cuss these  same  assumptions  in  that  expanded 
form  which  is  the  result  of  taking  into  the  ac- 
count the  content  of  a  fniiJier  special  experience 
of  an  aesthetic,  ethical,  and  definitively  religious 
kind.  Readers  who  have  not  already  made  them- 
selves somewhat  familiar  with  the  author's  views 
on  metaphysical  questions,  should,  in  studying  this 
volume,  recur  constantly  to  the  *  Outlines  of  Meta- 
physic,' or  to  the  larger  volume  on  Metaphysic  in 
his  *  System  of  Philosophy.' 

It    is    my   earnest    hope    that  a   large   number  of 
those  whose  work  it  is  to  teach  religion  will  make 


editor's  preface.  vii 


a  somewhat  careful  study  of  this  brief  philosophi- 
cal treatise.  It  seems  to  me  admirably  adapted 
for  an  exercise  in  that  fundamental  thinking  on 
the  most  important  of  subjects  presented  to  the 
human  reason,  which  no  one  can  safely  despise, 
and  which  few  are  in  a  position  wisely  to  neglect. 
It  is  surely  when  applied  to  such  subjects,  if  at 
all,  that  Philosophy  may  make  good  her  claim  to 
the  ancient  title  which  ascribed  to  her  something 
of  the  '  divine.' 

It    is    scarcely  necessary  for   me    to    repeat  what 
was   said  in  the  Preface  to  the  *  Outlines  of  Meta- 
physic ' ;   namely,   that   my    office    is    solely  that    of 
an   interpreter,   and    not    at    all   that   of   a   critic   or 
judge,  —  favorable    or   unfavorable   to   any  views   of 
the    author.     One    remark,    however,    may   properly 
be    added,     simply    with    a    view    to    guard    those 
readers   who   are   not  familiar  with   the   writings  of 
Lotze,  against  impressions  that  might  lead  to  mis- 
understanding  him.     This    entire  treatise    is    avow- 
edly  designed    to    inquire    ''how   much   of   the   con- 
tent   of    religion   may   be   discovered,   proved,  or  at 
least    confirmed,    agreeably    to    reason"    (see    p.   2). 
It    is    an    effort    to   treat    of    "  Religion    within    the 
limits    of   mere    reason."     But    it    is   also   avowedly 
very   far    from    that    "  barren    rationalism "    which 
overlooks    the     '  aesthetic '     (in    the    widest     sense) 


f 


VIU  FDTTOT?  S    I'REFACE. 


elements  of  human  nature  (p.  6f.);  ii  makes  con- 
stant reference  to,  and  attempts  to  afford  satis- 
faction for,  our  indestructible  religious  needs.  Par- 
ticularly in  the  last  two  chapters,  therefore,  it 
should  be  remembered,  that  what  may  be  said  to 
be,  *  speculatively  '  considered,  cither  determinable 
or  unknowable,  is  by  no  means  necessarily  the 
same  when  considered  from  the  point  of  view 
occupied  by  the  investigator  of  the  specific  truths 
of  Biblical  revelation.  In  other  words,  a  large 
amount  of  speculative  agnosticism  is  not  incom- 
patible with  a  firm  conviction  as  to  the  truthful- 
ness of  the  system  of  doctrines  called  Scriptural, 
and  scientifically  formulated  by  dogmatics. 

The  first  translation  of  this  volume,  with  the 
exception  of  Chapters  1 1,  to  IV.,  was  made  by 
L.  O.  Brastow,  D.D. :  the  editor  is  responsible  for 
the  translation  of  those  three  chapters  and  for 
the  revision  of  the  whole.  The  nature  of  both 
the  subject  and  its  treatment  has  made  it  pos- 
sible to  present  this  one  of  the  series,  with  the 
exception  of  certain  distinctively  metaphysical  por- 
tions, in  a  form  more  easily  intelligible  to  most 
readers  than  was  possible  in  the  case  of  the 
'  Outlmes   of    Metaphysic* 

GEORGE   T.    LADD. 

New  Havkn,  January,    1885. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


-»<>•- 


PAGE 

Introduction i 

Chapter  I .  —  The  Proofs  for  the  Existence  of  God    .  8 
II.  —  More  precise  Determinations  of  the  Abso- 
lute    .......  35 

III.  —  The  Metaphysical  Attributes  of  God          .  45 

IV.  —  Of  the  Personality  of  the  Absolute         .  55 
V.  —  Of  the  Conception  of  Creation  ...  70 

VI.  —  Of  Preservation       .         .         .         .         .  81 

VII.  —  Of  Government  .         .....  95 

VIII.  —  Of  the  Conception  of  the  World-Aim    .  114 
IX.  —  Religion  and  Morality        .         .         .         .129 

X.  —  Dogmas  and  Confessions        .         .         .  143 


INTRODUCTION. 


—<>»- 


§  1.  If  religion  were  a  normal  product  of  the 
human  reason  alone,  then  philosophy  would  be 
the  sole  legitimate  organ  for  determining  and 
interpreting  its   content. 

If,  on  the  contrary,  it  sprung  from  revelation, 
then  reason  alone  would  not  be  able,  it  is  true, 
to  have  discovered  it ;  but  after  it  were  in  exist- 
ence, it  would  still  be  necessary  to  show  that  its 
content  is  the  adequate  fulfilment  for  those  re- 
ligious needs  which  our  reason  is  compelled  to  cher- 
ish, but  would  not  be  able  of  itself  to  satisfy.  Even 
in  this  case,  therefore,  philosophy  would  have  a 
work  to  accomplish  by  way  of  such  authenticating. 
The  assertion  that  the  content  of  religion  is  a 
*  mystery '  is  not  convincing.  There  can  be  many 
facts  of  religion  of  such  sort  that  the  possibility 
of  their  coming  to  pass  may  not  admit  of  rational 
apprehension  ;  and  yet  we  should  not  without  ex- 
ception take  offence  at  this.  But  a  '  mystery,' 
the  significance  of  which  were  not  at  least  sus- 
ceptible of  definition,  would  be  a  mere  curiosity 
devoid  of  all   connection   with  our   religious   needs, 


iMiiLOsornv  of  religion. 


and,  on  this  account,  an  unworthy  object  of  reve- 
lation. 

Finally,  if  religion  were  a  morbid  product  of  the 
human  spirit,  philosophy,  even  in  that  case,  would 
find  occupation.  It  would  have  to  investigate  psy- 
chologically and  historically  the  conditions  of  the 
origin  of  this  delusion,  as  well  as  the  conditions 
of  avoiding  it  in  the  future. 

The  principal  object  of  the  following  reflections 
is  connected  with  the  first  point  of  view  above 
suggested  :  that  is,  we  seek  to  ascertain  how  much 
of  the  content  of  religion  may  be  discovered, 
proved,  or  at  least  confirmed,  agreeably  to  reason. 
The  two  other  points  of  view  we  subordinate  to 
this. 

§  2.  It  is  customary  to  demand  faith  in  contrast 
with  knowledge  as  the  proper  organ  for  the  truths 
of  religion.  Such  an  assertion  finds  its  most  exact 
expression  in  the  intimation  that,  in  fact,  even 
scientific  cognition  always  rests  ultimately  upon 
'faith';  that  is  to  say,  u}K)n  an  immediate  act  of 
trust  in  certain  absolutely  simple  and  self-evident 
truths,  which  are  neither  in  need  of  any  proof,  nor 
capable  of  it. 

An  important  distinction  is  overlooked  in  the 
above-mentioned    view.      All     such    ultimate,    self- 


THE    PROPOSITIONS    OF    FAITH. 


evident  propositi(3ns,  upon  which  our  knowledge  is 
founded,  are  general  judgments,  which  do  not  tell 
us  that  anything  whatever  is  or  takes  place,  but 
which  only  declare  what  would  exist  or  would  have 
to  take  place,  in  case  definite  conditions  occur  ;  or 
—  more  concisely  —  they  all  merely  express  certain 
general  rules,  which  we  are  obliged  to  follow  in  the 
combination  of  the  content  of  our  ideas.  On  the 
contrary,  those  propositions  upon  which  the  most 
special  interest  of  religion  depends,  —  for  example, 
that  God  is,  that  He  has  created  the  world,  that 
the  soul  survives  death,  etc.,  —  are  all  of  them 
declarative  judgments,  which  assert  a  definite,  par- 
ticular fact.  With  respect  to  the  before-mentioned 
general  propositions,  it  may  be  understood  that 
they  are  capable  of  being  objects  of  our  imme- 
diate insight  or  evidence  ;  for  they  are  nothing  but 
expressions  of  the  forms  of  activity,  in  which  our 
reason  according  to  its  own  nature  must  be  exer- 
cised. On  the  other  hand,  these  declarative  propo- 
sitions of  faith,  which  assert  a  fact  with  respect  to 
the  ordering  of  the  world  that  is  foreign  to  our 
own  nature,  cannot  with  equal  legitimacy  be  re- 
garded as  a  natural  or  innate  endowment  of  our 
spirit,  but  are  in  some  sort  the  results  of  culture. 


IMIILOSOI'llV    OF    RELIGION. 


S3.  It  wouUl  l)c  better  to  have  undertaken  a 
comparison  of  religious  truth  and  scientific  cog- 
nition (Hfferent  from  the  forcijjoini;.  No  cognition 
consists  merely  of  those  general  propositions  of 
which  we  have  made  mention  ;  but  every  cognition 
originates  by. means  of  the  application  of  these  prop- 
ositions to  a  content  which  only  experience  can  fur- 
nish ;  more  concisely,  it  is  an  elaboration  of  given 
perceptions.  Now  it  might  be  asserted  that  it  is  not 
the  external  world  exclusively  which  furnishes  these 
necessary  data  by  influence  on  our  senses.  Rather 
is  it  quite  as  admissible  to  think  of  a  divine  or 
supersensible  influence  upon  our  interior  being,  by 
means  of  which  *  intuitions '  of  another  species  fall 
to  our  lot,  such  as  the  senses  can  never  supply, 
and  such  as  constitute  just  that  religious  cognition 
which  obtrudes  itself  upon  us  with  immediate  cer- 
tainty. 

It  is  to  be  said  in  reply  to  the  foregoing  claim 
that,  although  the  aforesaid  divine  influences  are 
willingly  conceded,  still,  according  to  the  analogy 
of  the  'sense-impressions'  which  are  brought  into 
comparison  with  them,  they  can  consist  imme- 
diately in  nothing  but  a  certain  mode  of  our  affec- 
tion, or  of  our  experience,  or  of  our  feeling.  Now, 
just  as  a  sense-impression,  —  for  example,  a  color 
or  a  tone,  —  is   after  all   no  *  cognition  '   whatever ; 


ORIGIN    OF    RELIGIOUS    TRUTH.  5 

but  such  a  cognition  originates  only  by  comparing 
one  impression  with  others,  and  by  noticing  the 
relations  which  occur  between  them,  just  so  would 
those  supersensible  impressions  consist  immediately 
in  mere  feelings,  moods,  or  movements  of  our  own 
mind;  but  they  would  still  represent  in  this  form 
no  truth  of  religion.  The  rather  would  such  a 
truth,  as  admits  of  being  expressed  in  a  definite 
communicable  proposition,  originate  only  through 
the  agency  of  an  elaboration  in  thought  of  those 
'inner  experiences'  which  go  back  to  the  *  grounds' 
of  these  states  of  the  mind. 

§  4.  The  only  remnant  of  any  useful  result  from 
this  opposition  of  science  to  faith  is,  therefore,  the 
conviction  that  the  whole  of  our  knowledge  certainly 
does  not  originate  from  external  experience,  which 
is  mediated  for  us  by  the  senses ;  but  that  there  are 
also  inner  states  which  are  available  as  data  for 
the  acquisition  of  truth.  The  finishing  of  the 
structure  of  religion  depends,  not  exclusively  but 
chiefly,  upon  these  latter  data  ;  and  of  such  inner 
states  there  may  be  distinguished  three  groups  :  — 

(i)  The  personal  feelings  of  fear,  of  absolute 
dependence  on  unknown  powers,  which  belong  to 
the  most  effective,  but  also  to  the  most  crude  of 
the    fundamental    impulses    that   urge  the    mind    to 


PHILOSOPHY    or    RELIGION. 


seek    consolation    in    a    non-empirical    view    of    the 
workl. 

(2)  Then  there  arc  the  much  nobler  and  just  as 
truly  effective  aesthetic  feelings  that  yield  them- 
selves admiringly  to  the  beautiful  which  they  dis- 
cover in  the  world,  and  by  means  of  it  are  incited 
to  form  a  picture  of  an  ideal  world.  This  they 
do  without  any  egoistic  interest  in  the  consolation 
desired  ;  but  rather  with  the  sure  conviction  that 
what  is  so  fair  and  full  of  significance  cannot  be 
an  accidental  product  of  that  which  is  without 
significance,  but  must  be  either  the  very  Princi- 
ple of  the  world  or  closely  related  to  its  creative 
principle. 

(3)  Finally,  there  are  the  ethical  feelings,  which, 
without  being  deducible  from  *  mere  experience,' 
necessitate  the  attempt  to  think  of  the  world  as  a 
system  of  affairs  in  which  this  fact  of  the  moral 
obligation  of  the  will  to  a  definite  form  of  action 
finds  an  intelligible  and  rational  place. 

If  now  we  conceive  of  the  truth  of  religion  as 
developed  from  all  these  data  by  means  of  our 
reflection,  then  we  certainly  get  at  what  might  be 
designated  as  '*  Religion  within  the  limits  of  mere 
reason,"  but  still  not  at  that  which  has  been  so 
called.  For,  in  most  attempts  of  this  kind,  the 
great   and    weighty  influence    of    the    aforesaid    aes- 


CAUSES  OF  BARREN  RATIONALISM.         7 

thetic  elements  is  especially  overlooked,  and,  there- 
by, a  very  barren  rationalism  takes  the  place  of  that 
which  the  whole  reason,  acting  in  all  directions, 
would  be  able  to  produce. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  PROOFS  FOR  THE  EXISTENCE  OF  GOD. 

§  5.  The  different  attempts  of  reason  to  attain  to 
certainty  concerning  the  Supersensible,  by  starting 
from  all  the  above-mentioned  points  of  departure, 
are  too  manifold  for  direct  statement.  As  often, 
however,  as  science  has  sought  to  give  account  of 
the  results  it  has  won,  it  has  done  this  in  a  doctrine 
of  the  "  Proofs  for  the  existence  of  God."  Accord- 
ingly we  also  now  present  these  proofs  with  the 
design  to  show  how  each  one  of  them  adopts  its 
own  special  method  for  discovering  a  portion  of 
the  supersensible  truth  ;  and  with  the  brief  pre- 
liminary remark  that  these  proofs  naturally  cannot, 
properly  speaking,  demonstrate  the  existence  of  God 
as  necessary,  —  that  is,  as  dependent  on  something 
else,  —  but  that  they  are  all  able  merely  to  demon- 
strate our  assumption  of  this  existence  as  a  logi- 
cally necessary  consequence  of  the  given  facts  of 
the  world. 

§  6.  The  ontological  argument,  as  ordinarily  ap- 
prehended, maintains  that,  while  the  conception  of 
other  beings   does   not    include   their   existence,  the 


THE    MOST    PERFECT    BEING. 


conception  of  the  most  perfect  Being  of  all  does 
include  it  ;  and  that  this  being  would  in  fact  con- 
tradict its  own  conception,  if  the  one  perfection 
—  to  wit,  existence  itself  —  did  not  belong  to  it. 

The  logical  error  of  this  argument  is  sufficiently- 
well  known.  Not  merely  the  conception  of  the 
most  perfect  Being,  but  indeed  that  of  every  living 
or  active  being  (as,  for  example,  the  conception  of 
an  animal),  includes  existence  also  as  necessary  to 
be  added  in  thought  for  defining  it  ;  and  without 
this  all  the  rest  of  its  predicates  {e.g.,  sensation, 
motion,  propagation,  etc.)  would  be  quite  unthink- 
able. But  with  respect  to  no  one  of  these  concep- 
tions, does  it  follow  from  the  necessity  of  adding 
in  thought  this  i^iai'k  (of  existence),  that  after  this 
the  total  content  of  the  conception  thus  fully 
thought  has  validity  in  the  nature  of  reality  also, 
and  that  it  may  not  be  a  merely  thinkable  combi- 
nation of  our  imasfination. 

But  although  logically  this  attempt  at  proof  is 
quite  invalid,  it  is  nevertheless  of  interest  in  other 
respects.  For  that  which  induces  it  to  regard 
existence  as  a  necessary  attribute  of  the  total 
content  of  the  conception  of  the  mo.st  perfect 
Being,  is  not,  as  it  is  in  the  case  of  the  other 
conception  (that  of  the  animal),  the  mere  circum- 
stance that  the  rest  of  the  predicates  would  admit 


lO  riiiLOsoi'HV  or  ki:li(;ic)N. 

of  formal  attachment  to  wliat  is  existent  only,  and 
not  to  what  is  non-existent.  This  is  obviously 
rather  a  case  where  an  altogether  immediate  con- 
viction breaks  through  into  consciousness  ;  to  wit, 
the  conviction  that  tlie  totality  of  all  that  has 
value  —  all  that  is  perfect,  fair,  and  good  —  can- 
not possibly  be  homeless  in  the  world  or  in  tlie 
realm  of  actuality,  but  has  the  very  best  claim  to 
be  regarded  by  us  as  imperishable  reality.  This 
assurance,  which  properly  has  no  need  of  proof, 
has  sought  to  formulate  itself,  after  a  scholastic 
fashion,  in  the  above-mentioned  awkward  argument. 

§  7.  The  cosmological  argument  begins  in  an  ap- 
prehension of  frequent  occurrence,  yet  withal  wholly 
incorrect  ;  namely,  that  the  existence  of  each  indi- 
vidual Thing  and  of  the  world  in  general  is  contin- 
gent, and  therefore  presupposes  not  a  contingent 
but  a  necessary  Being.  At  this  point,  the  particular 
conceptions  which  are  wrongly  attached  to  this 
thought,  must  be  first  subjected  to  a  definition. 

The  ordinary  use  of  language  is  not  at  all  ac- 
quainted with  the  philosophic  significance  of  the 
word  'contingent,'  according  to  which  it  is  applicable 
to  every  existing  thing  whose  non-existence  in  gen- 
eral would  be  thinkable  without  contradiction,  and 
whose  conception  or  whose  nature  accordingly  offers 


IDEA    OF    THE    'CONTINGENT.'  II 

no  resistance  to  the  cessation  of  its  own  existence. 
Rather  does  the  common  usage  in  the  first  instance 
merely  contrast  the  'contingent'  with  the  designed, 
and  understands  by  it  all  those  secondary  effects 
which,  without  being  themselves  designed,  originate 
from  action  of  ours  that  is  designed.  This  happens 
because  our  actions  themselves  are  for  the  most  part 
capable  of  accomplishment  only  by  means  of  some 
change  in  the  objects  of  the  external  world  ;  these 
objects,  however,  because  of  those  relations  inde- 
pendent of  ourselves  in  which  they  stand  to  each 
other,  cannot  be  changed  by  us  without  propagating 
still  further  in  various  directions  the  impressions 
they  have  received. 

We  speak,  furthermore,  of  '  contingent '  events, 
when  we  have  directed  our  attention  to  a  general 
law  of  nature  and  when,  in  its  application  to  a 
single  case,  processes  occur  which  do  not  follow 
from  the  law  and  from  the  circumstances  necessary 
for  its  application,  but  only  from  the  accessory  cir- 
cumstances that  are  foreign  to  the  law.  Even 
such  a  'contingent,'  as  well  as  the  preceding,  is, 
wherever  it  occurs,  necessary  and  inevitable,  and  is 
constantly  conditioned  by  its  own  adequate  reasons  ; 
only  these  reasons  do  not  reside  in  the  design  nor 
in   the  law. 

Finally,   we   also   call   such   facts  'contingent*  as 


12  rillLOSOPHY    OK    RELIGION. 

are  assumed  l)v  us  not  to  be  predestinated  in  such 
a  plan  of  tlic  world's  course  as  we  have  rightly 
or  wronjT^ly  presupposed,  but  only  to  originate  inci- 
dentally througli  the  mechanism  of  those  efficient 
agencies  which  are  summoned  for  the  accomplish- 
ment of  that  plan. 

And  with  the  one  just  mentioned  is  connected  the 
still  broader  use  of  the  word,  according  to  which  it 
becomes  a  mere  determination  of  value,  and  desig- 
nates that  whose  nature  and  content  seem  to  de- 
serve existence  neither  on  account  of  its  own  value 
nor  by  connection  w^ith  other  values  ;  although  it, 
nevertheless,  is  in  possession  of  such  existence.  In 
this  sense,  the  '  contingent '  is  simply  the  matter 
of  fact,  whose  being  does  not  permit  either  of  deri- 
vation from  an  effectuating  condition,  or  of  justifi- 
cation by  its  own  value. 

§  8.  The  other  conception,  namely,  that  of  the 
'  necessary,'  is,  in  the  only  meaning  of  it  which  is 
quite  clear  to  us,  completely  identical  with  that  of 
the  'conditioned.'  That  only  'is'  necessary,  the  ac- 
tuality of  which  cannot  be  conceived  of  as  lacking, 
whenever  a  definite  presupposed  condition  actually 
takes  place. 

But  it  is  very  easy  to  understand  whence  comes 
the   wish    to    place    in    opposition    to    this    "  condi- 


IDEA    OF    THE    'NECESSARY.'  1 3 

tioned  necessary"  another  of  a  higher  sort.  For  a 
given  c,  which  must  of  course  exist  in  case  a  deter- 
minate b  exists,  is  '  necessary '  only  in  the  sense  of 
its  being  forxed.  By  means  of  its  own  nature 
merely,  and  without  the  aid  of  b,  this  c  would  ?iot 
exist.  The  '  necessary  '  in  that  higher  sense  which 
is  sought,  would  therefore  be  such  an  one  as  is  not 
dependent  on  anything  else  for  its  existence,  and 
consequently  is  not  conditioned. 

But  it  is  entirely  incorrect  to  persist  in  designat- 
ing such  an  unconditioned  as  is  sought  for,  by  the 
predicate  'necessary.'  It  must  rather  be  called 
the  absolute  matter  of  fact,  which  exists  for  the 
reason  merely  that  it  does  exist ;  which  does  not 
need  for  its  existence  any  extraneous  condition ; 
but  which,  for  precisely  this  reason,  can  only  be  an 
actual  and  never  a  necessary  existence. 

§  9.  According  to  the  analysis  made  above,  the 
thoughts  of  the  cosmological  argument  do  not  co- 
here well.  From  the  so-called  '  contingent,'  —  i.e. 
from  that  which  is  conditioned  by  something  else 
external  to  it,  and  in  just  this  respect  must  be 
called  likewise  necessary,  —  it  is  certainly  possible 
to  ascend  to  the  Unconditioned,  whose  existence 
is  dependent  on  nothing  else  ;  but  for  this  very 
reason    such    an    unconditioned    is    not    *  necessary,' 


14  rniLosornv  of  KicLUiioN. 

but  merely  matter  of  fact  or  actual.  The  desire  to 
find  something,  which  by  means  of  its  own  nature, 
made  its  own  existence  nccessar)',  is  intrinsically 
beyond  the  possibility  of  realization, — as  we  saw  it 
to  be  in  the  case  of  the  ontolo^ical  ar<;ument  ;  and 
to  this  cause  was  due  also  the  failure  of  the  thought 
that  the  Unconditioned  w^hich  is  souirht  is  to  be 
found  in  a  most  perfect  l^ein^^.  To  that  merely 
actual  (not  necessary)  unconditioned  existence,  the 
smallest,  meanest,  and  most  insignificant  thing  has 
just  as  good  a  claim  as  the  most  perfect ;  and  that 
precisely  for  the  reason  that  it  is  an  unconditioned 
existence,  and  therefore  is  dependent  on  no  reasons 
of  any  kind. 

In  another  direction  also  the  cosmological  argu- 
ment goes  farther  than  its  premises  permit.  It  was 
legitimate  to  seek  an  Unconditioned  for  the  Condi- 
tioned in  the  world  ;  but  it  is  an  altogether  arbi- 
trary leap  to  assume  that  this  Unconditioned  must 
be  One ;  and,  furthermore,  that  it  can  be  conceived 
of  only  in  the  form  of  a  single  real  Being.  It 
is  possible  that  this  assumption  may  be  justified 
subsequently  ;  but  just  at  this  point  the  other  as- 
sumption, to  which  the  natural  sciences  have  come 
through  their  need  of  interpreting  the  world,  obvi- 
ously lies  much  nearer  at  hand.  We  refer  to  the 
assumption   of    a  very  great    multiplicity  of    uncon- 


A    SINGLE    UNCONDITIONED    BEING.  1 5 


ditionally  existing  elements,  which  are  independent 
of  each  other,  and  are  only  subject  to  a  general 
sphere  of  laws  in  accordance  with  which  the  mani- 
fold phenomena  proceed  from  their  changeable  posi- 
tions with  respect  to  each  other. 

One  more  consideration  of  a  logical  character 
must  first  qualify  this  view.  It  is  that  we  get  no 
insight  as  to  how  a  single  unconditioned  being, 
even  though  it  were  in  existence,  would  be  able  to 
condition  anything  else,  and  therefore  serve  as  the 
desired  initial  member  in  the  conditioned  series  of 
the  world's  events.  A  conclusion  or  a  consequence 
never  follows  except  from  the  concurrence  of  two 
premises,  and  not  from  one  premise  alone.  To  the 
one  unconditioned  Being,  therefore,  if  aught  is  to 
result  from  it,  there  would  always  have  to  be  added 
again  other  accessory  circumstances,  which  do  not 
emanate  from  it,  but  which  are  just  as  much  uncon- 
ditioned :  the  world  therefore  would  not  be  depend- 
ent upon  onc\  but  upon  inany  unconditioned  begin- 


nings. 


§  10.  The  teleological  argument  proposes  to  make 
that  empirical  conformit)'  to  an  end,  which  appears 
in  the  world,  the  point  of  departure  for  an  inference 
with  respect  to  a  single  designing  and  creative  rea- 
son, as  the  supreme  cause  of  the  world. 


l6  PHILOSOI'llV    OK    RELIGION. 

Let  US  in  the  first  place  investigate  the  con- 
ception of  that  which  is  'conformable  to  an  end,' 
as  such.  This  conception  is  entirely  free  from 
ambiguity  only  when  we  take  our  start  from  the 
conscious  purposes  of  our  own  will,  which  are 
fixed  upon  a  determinate  result  as  their  end.  In 
that  case,  what  is  '  conformable  to  an  end  '  is  the 
selection  or  combination  of  means,  which,  by  their 
legitimate  action,  bring  about  the  realization  of  the 
aforesaid  end.  To  call  those  means  themselves 
'  conformable  to  an  end  *  is,  properly  speaking,  not 
correct.  They  are  themselves  merely  serviceable : 
that  is  to  say,  their  nature  is  in  itself  calculated 
for  no  determinate  end  whatever,  such  as  we  might 
set  for  ourselves  ;  but  it  is  merely  of  such  sort 
that  a  useful  application  of  it  to  our  ends  be- 
comes possible  for  us. 

Now  that  this  '  serviceableness '  or  '  accidental 
conformity '  of  things  in  the  world  to  an  end,  is 
of  very  frequent  occurrence,  proves  nothing  further. 
For  when  once  there  exist  Things  with  properties 
of  their  own  and  with  established  methods  of  ac- 
tion, it  is  a  matter  of  course  that  some  of  our 
designs  (which  themselves,  in  the  last  analysis, 
always  amount  to  the  same  as  some  alteration 
in  the  states  of  Things)  may  be  accomplished  by 
means    of   the    activity   to   which   other  Things    lay 


IMMANENT    CONFORMITY    TO    END.  1/ 

claim.  More  than  this,  however,  does  not  in  reality 
take  place.  The  nature  of  Things  is  not  so  emi- 
nently useful,  that  it  would  be  sufficient  for  the  ac- 
complishment even  of  all  authorized  designs  ;  and  it 
is  not  so  absolutely  useful  that  it  might  not  serve 
just  as  well  for  the  frustration  of  that  which  is 
rational,  and  for  the  production  of  that  which  is 
unauthorized. 

§  11.  In  contrast  with  the  aforesaid  utility,  an 
"immanent  conformity  to  an  end"  is  spoken  of, 
which  appears  primarily  in  the  individual  organisms 
that  have  no  other  end  beyond  their  own  existence, 
but  in  each  one  of  which  all  parts  are  recipro- 
cally related  as  end  and  means.  Such  conformity 
to  an  end  is  then  transferred  from  these  individ- 
ual organisms  to  the  Universe,  as  to  a  *' great  or- 
ganism." 

Now  we  are  accustomed  to  assert  that  these  com- 
posite forms  cannot  possibly  be  mere  products  of 
the  blind  co-operation  of  many  elements,  without  the 
unity  of  one  controlling  design.  Such  a  conclusion 
is  decidedly  false.  Even  supposing  a  conscious  de- 
sign to  be  demonstrably  at  work,  still  the  realiza- 
tion of  its  end  is  always  dependent  on  the  fact,  that 
every  particle  of  this  end  is  likewise  the  inevita- 
ble  and  undesignedly  necessary  product  of  the  co- 


l8  rillLOSOPHV    OF    KliLIGlON. 


operation  of  tlic  means  summoned  to  aid.  The 
end  would  not  be  possible  at  all  if  it  were  impossi- 
ble in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  the  mechanism 
which  these  means  follow ;  and  it  would  not  be 
actual,  if  it  were  not  also  necessary  in  accordance 
with  these  laws,  at  the  very  instant  when  the  afore- 
said means  are  applied. 

But  still  further  :  It  is  supposed  that  at  least  the 
bringing  together  of  the  means  themselves,  into 
those  positions  in  which  they  are  of  necessity  com- 
pelled to  realize  the  end,  is  impossible  without  a 
controlling  design.  But  again  it  may  be  answered : 
Even  where  this  design  actually  exists,  it  is  unable 
to  bring  the  usable  means  into  those  useful  posi- 
tions by  its  own  mere  volition  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is 
able  to  accomplish  this  only  by  summoning  physical 
agencies  and  forces  of  a  sort  similar  to  the  means 
themselv^es.  Therefore  the  state  attained  at  any 
given  instant,  when  the  end  is  accomplished,  must 
be  regarded  as  the  necessary  resultant  of  the  co- 
operation of  these  forces  at  the  preceding  instant ; 
and  instead  of  an  intelligence  which  might  ex- 
plain the  state  of  the  case  belonging  to  this  pre- 
ceding instant,  there  may  always  be  substituted  a 
combination  of  other  blind  elements  and  forces 
which  were  compelled  to  have  precisely  the  same 
result. 


IMMANENT    CONFORMITY    TO    END.  1 9 

To  State  the  same  thing  briefly  :  The  completely 
automatic  blind  origin  even  of  the  system  most 
conformable  to  an  end,  is  never  impossible ;  it  is 
only  improbable.  And  now  the  question  comes, 
what  is  meant  by  this  latter  expression  ? 

S  12.  If  we  take  for  sfranted,  that  an  indefinite 
multitude  of  different  elements  act  ujoon  one  an- 
other entirely  in  accordance  with  mechanical  laws, 
and  that  they  were  aboriginally  in  reciprocal  mo- 
tions which  were  not  regulated  by  any  design,  then 
there  might  issue  from  such  conditions  innumera- 
ble possible  consequences.  The  forms  possessed  of 
an  immanent  conformity  to  an  end  would  represent 
only  a  very  insignificant  number  among  these  pos- 
sible consequences  ;  and  therefore  they  would  have 
very  little  probability  of  coming  into  existence.  But 
to  reason  back  from  this  to  a  design  proposing 
an  end,  would  be  valid  only  in  case  the  forms  con- 
formable to  the  end  alone  appeared  in  the  world  ; 
and  in  case  those  other  results  that  are  without 
an  end,  or  in  contradiction  to  an  end,  were  neither 
present  in  experience,  nor  needed  to  be  assumed 
even  as  having  existed  in  the  past. 

Neither  of  the  above-mentioned  suppositions  cor- 
responds with  the  facts.  In  our  actual  observation 
there  occur  innumerable  cases  of  disease  and  of  the 


20  PHlLOSOrilV    OK    RELIGION. 

failure  of  rational  life-ends;  —  to  say  nothing  what- 
ever of  the  very  many  facts  and  occurrences  which, 
so  far  as  our  discernment  extends,  are  at  least  with- 
out an  end,  even  if  they  disturb  no  other  end.  But 
with  reference  to  the  past  we  are  at  liberty  to  as- 
sume, that  at  first  an  innumerable  multitude  of  in- 
harmonious forms,  intrinsically  hostile  to  any  end, 
actually  emerged  from  the  reciprocal  impact  of  blind 
elements  ;  that  these  forms,  however,  were  not  able 
to  maintain  themselves  in  the  course  of  nature,  as 
against  the  constant  assaults  from  without  ;  that,  on 
the  contrary,  only  those  few  held  out,  which  had 
chanced  to  be  the  more  fortunate  ;  that  then  these 
fortunate  ones  exerted  more  and  more  a  determin- 
ing influence  upon  the  rest  ;  and  that  thus  gradu- 
ally it  has  come  to  pass,  that  nature  runs  its  course, 
not  indeed  in  complete  perfection  and  conformity  to 
an  end,  but  after  all  to  such  an  extent  that  there 
still  remain  but  few  disturbances  or  interferences 
by  which  the  development  and  perpetuation  of  the 
structures  that  are  conformable  to  an  end,  is  en- 
dangered. In  this  way,  therefore,  it  would  not  be 
unthinkable  that  an  original  chaos  gradually  shaped 
itself  into  a  nature  that  is  arranged  in  conformity 
to  ends. 


INTELLIGENT    ELEMENTS    OF    REALITY.  21 


§  13.  Moreover,  it  is  not  necessary  to  stop  with 
the  altogether  meagre  assumptions  which  we  have 
made.  If  it  is  once  held  to  be  conceivable  that 
a  single  supreme  intelligence  may  exert  an  influ^ 
ence  upon  the  reciprocal  relations  of  the  elements 
of  the  world,  then  similar  intelligence  may  also  be 
imagined  as  immediately  active  in  all  these  indi- 
vidual elements  themselves ;  and,  instead  of  con- 
ceiving them  as  controlled  merely  by  blindly  op- 
erative forces,  they  may  be  imagined  as  animated 
spiritual  beings,  who  strive  after  certain  states  and 
offer  resistance  to  certain  other  states.  In  such 
case  there  may  be  imagined  the  gradual  origin  of 
ever  more  perfect  relations,  from  the  reciprocal 
action  of  these  elements,  almost  like  the  reciprocal 
action  of  a  human  society ;  and  that  too  without 
necessarily  arriving  at  the  assumption,  to  which  we 
are  here  inclined,  of  a  single,  supreme,  intelligent 
Being.  Our  reasoning  issues  rather  in  a  sort  of 
polytheistic  or  even  pantheistic  conception,  and  that 
too  in  quite  tolerable  agreement  with  experience. 

§  14.  Against  what  was  said  above  it  may  still 
be  objected,  that  the  persistence,  the  power  of  self- 
maintenance,  and  the  equipoise  of  the  more  for- 
tunate forms,  which  we  previously  admitted  to  have 
originated    in    the   blind   course   of    nature,   are   not 


22  rniLosoriiY  of  religion. 

identical  \vitli  that  conformity  to  an  end,  the  ad- 
miration for  whicli  was  our  ]K)int  of  departure  in 
the  teleological  argument.  The  aforesaid  mere  equi- 
poise, and  the  permanence  that  originates  from  it, 
might  also  belong  of  themselves  to  altogether  pur- 
poseless forms  ;  that  is  to  say,  to  forms  whose  entire 
existence  would  have  absolutely  no  immediate  value 
and  no  rational  significance.  Both  these  character- 
istics however  we  suppose  we  recognize  in  those 
structures  conformable  to  an  end,  which  we  are  here 
making  our  point  of  departure. 

There  is  a  remainder  of  truth  in  the  above-men- 
tioned view  ;  but  the  thought  does  not  prove  what 
it  was  assumed  to  prove.  To  wit,  so  soon  as  we 
confine  ourselves  simply  to  admiration  for  an  imma- 
nent conformity  to  an  end,  we  are  in  fact  scarcely 
ever  able  to  demonstrate  conclusively  that  the  total 
result  which  is  produced  by  it  is  actually  anything 
of  absolute  value;  —  a  value  which  would  have  to 
be  apprehended  either  as  being  generically  its  own 
end,  or  as  being  such  an  end  as  to  admit  of  our 
understanding  that  it  could  have  been  devised  only 
by  a  designing  wisdom,  and  that  if  only,  rather  than 
one  of  its  opposites,  was  worthy  of  this  wisdom. 

We  admire,  for  example,  the  stability  of  the  plan- 
etary system ;  we  believe  that  only  a  Providence 
has  been  able  to  choose  from  among  the  innumer- 


MEANS  AND  END  IN  ORGANISM.         23 

able  possible  arrangements  of  its  masses,  precisely 
that  one  on  which  this  stability  depends.  But  it 
may  be  questioned  whether  after  all  this  constant 
repetition  of  the  same  occurrences  is,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  a  supreme  end  ;  and  whether  it  may  not 
rather  be  a  tedious  arrangement  ;  so  much  so  that 
there  might  conceivably  have  been  innumerable 
arrangements,  that  never  occur  in  the  actual  world, 
which  the  one  succession  of  different  developments 
of  the  heavenly  bodies  might  have  established,  — 
something  much  more  manifold,  novel,  and  inter- 
esting. In  plants,  after  they  once  exist,  everything 
harmonizes  as  means  and  end.  But  what  is  the 
value  of  their  entire  existence  ?  Ends  external  to 
themselves,  which  they  serve,  are  accomplished  by 
them  ;  but  they  might  possibly  have  been  accom- 
plished by  a  shorter  methocl.  Their  own  growth 
and  bloom  is  in  the  estimate  of  our  understanding 
an  entirely  purposeless  fact,  in  which  nothing  fur- 
ther actually  appears  than  that  equiiDoise  which  the 
mechanical  course  of  nature  is  capable  of  produc- 
ing, and  from  which  the  conformity  to  an  end  here 
assumed  should  be  quite  essentially  distinguished. 

The  above-mentioned  consideration  may  be  ex- 
tended to  the  world  of  animals  and  men  :  so  Ions: 
as  there  are  still  among  the  latter  so  many  com- 
plaints  about    unrealizable   ideals,  the   thought   that 


24  riiiLosopHV  or  religion. 

much  of  the  beauty  \vc  conceive  has  no  existence 
will  continue  to  nullify  the  conclusiveness  of  the 
telcological  argument. 

§  15.  If  we  summarize  our  thoughts,  there  re- 
mains but  one  point  of  a  positive  character,  and 
this  is  the  conviction  that  there  is  in  the  world 
at  all  events  a  great  deal  of  that  which  is  beautiful 
and  great  and  excellent,  —  admiration  for  which  was 
the  point  of  departure  for  this  teleological  argu- 
ment ;  and  that  it  is  by  no  means  possible  to  get  rid 
of  this  argument  by  deducing  all  its  examples  from 
the  undesigned  reciprocal  actions  of  innumerable 
elements,  working  in  accordance  with  law.  By  such 
deduction  we  merely  change  the  location  of  that 
which  has  value.  We  are  necessitated  then  to  as- 
sert of  just  that  aforesaid  original  nature  of  the 
elements,  and  of  their  general  laws  of  action,  that 
.  they  themselves  from  the  very  first  include  within 
themselves  the  ground  capable  of  developing  that 
which  has  value. 

But  the  course  of  thought  given  above  has  ut- 
terly failed  as  an  argument  for  the  existence  of  God. 
That  Intelligence,  of  which  we  cannot  be  wholly 
rid,  admits  just  as  well  of  being  apprehended  as  a 
property  adhering  iminanently  to  all  Things  ;  or 
even,  if  one  is  pleased  to  seek  it  outside  of  Things, 


FATE    OF    THE    TELEOLOGICAL    ARGUMENT. 


^D 


as  a  multiplicity  of  spiritual  beings  or  demons,  who 
share  with  each  other  in  the  creation  and  control 
of  the  world.  And  each  of  these  assumptions  really 
harmonizes  better  with  the  immediate  impression 
of  experience  than  the  hasty  assumption  of  one 
only  supreme  wisdom,  from  which  as  their  source 
the  imperfections  of  the  world,  that  in  fact  are 
manifest  to  us,  are  much  more  difficult  to  compre- 
hend. 

§  16.  The  teleological  argument  was  wrecked  by 
the  fact  that  it  was  unable,  with  sufficient  certainty 
and  to  a  sufficient  extent,  to  prove  empirically  the 
empirical  datum,  which  it  assumed  to  make  its  point 
of  departure,  —  namely,  the  world's  conformity  to 
an  end. 

We  attempt  therefore  to  find  our  point  of  depart- 
ure in  a  simpler  datum,  which  is  not  so  doubtful, 
and  which  is  quite  as  generally  acknowledged.  And 
we  attempt  to  deduce  from  it,  not  exactly  the 
existence  of  God,  but  a  more  modest  conclusion, 
which  shall  serve  us  as  a  preliminary  condition  for 
that  other  conclusion. 

This  datum  is  in  substance  the  assumption  that 
all  the  elements  of  the  world,  without  exception, 
act  upon  each  other,  no  matter  whether  adapted  to 
an    end    or    the    reverse ;    and    therefore    that    each 


26  PHILOSOPHY    OF    RELIGION. 


exerts  influences  upon  the  rest,  or,  in  turn,  receives 
influences  from  them.  So  far  as  our  experience 
extends,  it  confirms  this  assumption.  The  objec- 
tion against  it,  that  we  know  little  of  the  past,  and 
absolutely  nothing  of  the  future,  and  that  even  in 
the  present  perhaps  individual  elements  do  not 
stand  in  any  relation  of  reciprocal  action  with  each 
other,  cannot  refute  the  assumption.  For  this  in- 
difference just  mentioned  between  two  elements  — 
a  and  b  —  at  the  same  time  that  each  individual 
element  stands  in  a  relation  of  reciprocal  action 
with  many  others,  we  should  after  all  never  be  com- 
pelled to  regard  as  a  fact  based  upon  no  principle, 
but  as  the  necessary  consequence  of  the  same  Maw,' 
in  accordance  with  which  a  and  b  exercise  the  afore- 
said other  reciprocal  actions.  And  just  so,  if  in 
the  past  or  future  these  actions  of  the  elements 
with  respect  to  each  other,  were  different  from 
what  they  are  now  ;  yet  we  should  not  regard 
even  this  as  a  fact  independent  of  conditions,  but 
as  conditioned  by  some  fixed  law,  which  sooner  or 
later  would  demand  other  actions  with  the  same 
consistency  with  which  it  now  demands  the  ones 
in  question. 

If  what  was  said  above  be  not  acknowledged,  but 
if  it  were  maintained  rather  that  the  elements  of  the 
world,  without  any  cause,  have  sometimes  acted  upon 


THE    ORIGINAL    ELEMENTS    RELATED.  2^ 

each  other,  in  general,  and  at  other  times  not  at 
all,  at  one  time  thus  and  at  another  time  otherwise  ; 
then  the  very  basis  for  every  investigation  would 
be  abolished.  Such  a  world  would  furnish  no  data 
whatever  for  any  conclusion,  even  with  respect  to 
an  event  that  is  to  be  anticipated  within  its  own 
limits  merely,  still  less  for  any  conclusion  with  re- 
spect to  anything  external  to  itself,  which  might  be 
regarded,  as  in  any  sense,  its  ground,  its  cause,  its 
end,  or  its  principle. 

§  17.  From  the  foregoing  it  follows  now  that 
the  individual  elements,  of  which  the  world  is  com- 
posed, are  by  no  means  able  to  exist  as  they  will ; 
and  that  therefore  a  course  of  the  world  cannot 
be  deduced  from  real  beings,  which  are  from  the 
beginning  wholly  without  relation  to  each  other. 

If,  for  example,  all  things  were  as  incomparable 
with  each  other  or  as  disparate  as  perhaps  *  red ' 
or  '  sweet '  (and  nothing  would  prevent  the  making 
of  such  an  assumption,  in  case  each  real  being  is 
completely  independent,  and  has  to  pay  no  regard 
whatever  to  all  the  others),  it  is  evident  that  no 
definite  result  could  possibly  spring  from  any  rela- 
tion between  two  such  beings  (supposing  one  to  be 
at  all  able  to  conceive  of  such  a  'relation')  with 
any  more  right  than  any  other  could  claim.      For, 


28  TMiir.osornv  oi-   religion. 


in  order  that  the  result  in  must  originate  from  a 
and  b,  while  the  same  result  m  could  not  originate 
from  a  and  <•,  it  is  necessary  that  there  first  exist 
between  b  and  c,  not  a  complete  incomparability, 
but  a  definite  contrariety,  or  a  difference  of  definite 
magnitude,  —  a  thing  which  is  not  thinkable,  unless 
b  and  c  are  comparable. 

The  further  development  of  these  considerations 
would  show  then,  that  this  comparability  must  ob- 
tain, not  merely  between  b  and  c,  but  between  all 
the  real  elements  of  the  world  ;  and  this  in  such 
manner,  that  these  elements  constitute  collectively, 
not  members  of  a  single  series,  indeed,  but  rather 
members  of  a  system  of  series  intersecting  each 
other ;  and  also  in  such  manner  that  it  should  be 
possible  for  one  to  proceed  from  the  nature  of  each 
individual  element  to  the  nature  of  every  other,  by 
a  definite  number  of  steps,  taken  within  this  net- 
work of  system.  Such  a  state  of  the  case  lies,  as 
a  silent  assumption,  just  as  if  it  were  utterly  im- 
possible to  be  otherwise,  at  the  foundation  of  our 
entire  view  of  the  world  ;  and,  on  this  account,  the 
importance  of  this  wonderful  circumstance  is  com- 
monly overlooked. 

§  18.    It   would    be   over-rash    to    infer  from    this, 
without  further   question,  a   common   origin   for  all 


ALL  ELEMENTS  ARE  COMPARABLE.        29 


these  elements.  For  although  this  comparableness 
of  theirs  seems  like  a  single  select  case  from  among 
many  in  contrast  with  the  empty  possibilities  which 
we  might  be  able  to  imagine  (as,  for  example,  that 
all  the  elements  were  as  totally  different  as  '  red,' 
'  sweet,'  or  *  warm '),  nevertheless  there  is  appli- 
cable to  the  case  no  calculation  of  probabilities,  in 
accordance  with  which  it  would  be  impossible  to 
accept  the  existence  of  this  particular  case  as  a 
mere  matter  of  fact  independently  of  a  common 
cause  for  all  the  elements. 

On  the  contrary,  a  different  conclusion  is  justi- 
fied. It  is  not  enough  that  the  natures  of  Things 
are  homogeneous,  unless  the  same  natures  stand 
in  some  other  connection  besides.  From  such  ho- 
mogeneity it  would  barely  follow  what  result  (c) 
must  originate  from  the  meeting  of  two  beings  a 
and  b,  —  taking  it  for  granted  that  there  were  in 
general  some  reason  why  something  new  must 
originate,  and  why  the  mere  existence  of  a  and  b 
and  their  conjunction  could  not  have  been  enough. 
Or,  as  expressed  in  other  words  :  The  most  that  fol- 
lows from  the  comparable  natures  a  and  b  concerns 
the  result  which  they  are  necessitated  to  produce, 
or  the  manner  in  which  they  are  necessitated  to 
act  upon  one  another  ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that 
they  must  {produce  anything  whatever,  or  that  they 
must  act  at  all  upon  each  other. 


30  I'llILOSOPlIV    OF    RELIGION. 

In  case  \vc  draw  a  conclusion  e  from  two  premises 
a  and  b,  the  meaning  is  as  follows  :  In  the  unity 
of  our  thinkin<;  ego,  the  two  thoughts  a  and  b  can- 
not appear  as  states  of  this  ego  without  the  thought 
V  being  attached  to  them, — and  this  just  on  account 
of  the  nature  of  this  one  subject.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  thought  a  were  conceived  by  one  person, 
and  the  thought  b  .by  another,  then  the  thought  c 
would  not  originate  as  a  consequence  in  either  one 
of  the  two,  although  c,  and  c  alone,  would  be  the 
necessary  result  of  a  and  b  provided  they  came  to- 
gether at  all.  The  case  is  exactly  so  with  Thijigs. 
From  the  mere  fact  that  one  Thing  a  exists,  and 
another  b  exists,  e  does  not  by  any  means  follow, 
of  course  ;  and  this,  although  c  would  be  the  only 
effect  which  could  follow,  provided  a  and  b  acted 
upon  each  other.  We  must  investigate  the  ques- 
tion what,  in  such  a  case,  would  correspond  to 
that  identity  of  the  thinking  subject  by  means  of 
which  the  thoughts  a  and  b  alone  are  necessitated 
to  produce  a  result. 

§  19.  We  derive  from  Metaphysic  the  conviction, 
that  this  fact  of  the  reciprocal  influence  of  two 
Things  a  and  b  is  impossible,  so  long  as  both  were 
conceived  of  as  entirely  self-sufficient  and  in  such 
sort  independent  of  each  other,  that  a  might  exist 


THINGS    AS    MODES    OF    ONE    BEING.  3 1 


and  be  what  it  is,  even  though  b  had  no  existence. 
It  remains  a  completely  insolvable  contradiction, 
that  a  and  b  accommodate  themselves  to  each  other 
(that  b,  therefore,  enters  into  a  state  p,  as  soon  as 
a  enters  into  the  state  a),  if  a  and  b  have  no  con- 
cern with  each  other. 

We  derive  moreover  from  Metaphysic  the  further 
conviction,  that  all  middle  terms,  which  are  inter- 
polated between  a  and  b,  such  as  the  'transition' 
of  a  'substance,'  of  an  'influence,'  or  of  a  'force,' 
are  either  essentially  inconceivable  ideas,  or  at  any 
rate  do  not  at  all  explain  the  action,  but  always 
leave  unanswered  the  same  question  ;  namely,  how 
X  after  its  transition  from  a  to  b  can  begin  the 
production  of  a  change  in  b,  —  that  is  to  say,  how 
X  can  act  upon  b,  or  how  in  general  one  Thing  can 
act  upon  another. 

Finally,  we  derive  the  conviction  that  the  afore- 
said inconceivableness  can  be  removed  only  by  the 
negation  of  the  independence  of  individual  Things  ; 
a  and  b  cannot  be  absolutely  different  beings,  but 
only  modifications  of  one  and  the  same  Being  M, 
which  is  in  them  all,  in  a,  b,  c,  d,  .  .  .,  the  truly 
Existent ;  and  which  has  indeed  assumed  different 
forms  in  all  these  different  Things,  but  still  re- 
mains indivisibly  one  and  the  same  individual  M. 

If,   then,    in    the    single   Thing  a    there   occurs  a 


32  PHILOSOPHY    or    KF.I.IGION. 

change  a,  this  a  is  co  ipso,  is  of  itself  already  be- 
sides a  change  of  31,  and  has  no  need  first  to 
become  such  a  change.  If  then  we  conceive  the 
nature  of  M  as  always  endeavoring  to  maintain  its 
own  identity,  M  will  now  produce  within  itself  a 
second  state  p,  which  occurs  as  a  compensation  to 
a,  and  in  connection  with  it  forms  again  an  expres- 
sion of  the  whole  nature  of  M. 

It  is  not  necessary,  however,  that  this  p  should 
appear  in  our  observation  as  a  change  of  a,  but  it 
may  appear  as  a  change  of  the  other  individual 
Thing  b.  And  this  would  then  be  the  procedure 
which  we  conceive  as  an  ''action  of  a  upon  b." 

§  20.  For  the  sake  of  elucidation  the  following 
remark  must  be  added  :  What  this  one  Beinfc,  or 
—  according  to  the  common  expression  —  what  'the 
Absolute '  is,  remains  at  first  completely  indeter- 
minate. From  the  fact  of  the  reciprocal  action  of 
individual  Things,  the  only  conclusion  at  which  we 
arrived  was  that  of  the  necessary  unity  of  this 
Absolute.  What  it  is,  is  left  for  further  determi- 
nation. 

Furthermore,  in  designating  Things  as  ''modifi- 
cations of  the  Absolute,"  it  is  to  be  acknowledged 
that  such  an  expression  contains  no  explanation 
whatever  of  the  precise  sort  of  unity  which  obtains 


THINGS    AS    MODES    OF    ONE    BEING.  33 

between  Things  and  the  Absolute  ;  or  of  the  sort 
of  dependence  in  which  they  stand  with  reference 
to  that  Absolute.  The  expression  has  rather  the 
distinct  negative  meaning  which  denies  the  self- 
dependence  of  individual  Things.  With  something 
of  like  sort  we  are  frequently  compelled  to  be  sat- 
isfied. We  are  very  often  obliged,  for  the  purpose 
of  removing  a  contradiction  or  of  explaining  an 
occurrence,  to  postulate  a  fact,  with  respect  to 
which,  however,  we  are  never  able  to  say  how  it 
were  possible  for  it  to  exist,  or  to  have  been 
brought  to  pass;  —  and  this,  even  in  case  it  can 
be  yet  more  accurately  defined  than  the  fact  that 
is  just  now  assumed  by  us.  We  postpone  to  a 
subsequent  chapter  whatever  more  there  is  to  be 
said  upon  this  point. 

Finally ;  even  the  elasticity,  or  self-maintenance, 
that  we  attribute  to  the  Absolute,  is  used  in  a 
preliminary  way  merely  as  a  not  unimaginable  ex- 
pression to  which  different  significations  may  be 
given.  It  is  not  necessary  to  conceive  of  the  reac- 
tions of  the  Absolute  against  the  changes  that 
occur,  as  directed,  in  a  merely  mechanical  way,  to 
the  preservation  of  the  status  quo ;  instead  of  this, 
we  might  assume  even  an  impulse  of  development 
in  progress  towards  a  definite  goal  ;  and  that  this 
impulse,  likewise,   by  means    of   any  state  a  which 


34  I'HILOSOPIIV    OF    RELIGION. 

had  originated  cither  elsewhere  or  in  the  prosecu- 
tion of  this  purposeful  activity,  would  occasion  the 
production  of  a  further  state  p,  by  which  such  pur- 
poseful activity  would  be  propagated  further.  Such 
an  assumi)tion,  made  in  a  preliminary  way,  is  a  mat- 
ter of  indifference.  It  is  certain  only  that  if  there 
is  to  be  any  reciprocal  action  whatever  of  individual 
Things,  there  must  be  in  the  Absolute  some  such 
consistent  sensibility  as  is  necessitated  to  produce 
by  means  of  o  its  consequence  p,  no  matter  whether 
it  be  for  self-maintenance  or  for  progress. 


CHAPTER    II. 

MORE    PRECISE     DETERMINATIONS    OF    THE    ABSOLUTE. 

§  21.  It  is  not  our  present  design  to  dissect 
logically  the  conception  of  an  '  Absolute,'  and  to  lay 
down  the  conditions  under  which  aught  would  be 
held  to  be  the  Absolute  or  acknowledged  as  such. 
As  far  as  this  is  a  matter  of  interest,  it  is  too 
difficult  for  the  present  moment.  Just  now  we  are 
rather  making  the  attempt  to  specify  by  name  that 
which  is  by  its  own  nature  adapted  to  fulfil  the 
conditions  above  alluded  to  ;  and,  of  course,  fulfil 
them  in  such  a  way  that  it  can  be  recognized  as 
the  absolute  Principle  of  that  world  which  is  given 
in  experience  as  bare  matter  of  fact.  Not  to  stray 
too  far  abroad,  we  confine  ourselves  to  the  two 
contraries  between  which  it  has  long  been  custom- 
ary to  distribute  the  consistence  of  whatever  is 
actual  ;    namely,  Matter  and  Spirit. 

§  22.  The  assumption  that  the  common  substance 
of  the  world  is  only  matter,  and  matter  as  endowed 
only  with  those  properties  which  we  in  physical 
science    attribute    to    every    portion    of    the     same, 


36  PHILOSOPHY  or   ki:i,k;iox. 


has  probably  never  been  made  in  earnest  by  any 
one. 

Such  an  assumption  would  take  upon  itself  the 
difficult  ])rc)blem  of  showini;  how,  from  these  mere 
properties  of  spacc-fillini;,  inertia,  divisibility,  and 
mobility,  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  therefore 
even  its  spiritual  constituents,  could  be  developed 
as  a  matter  of  course,  —  that  is  to  say,  as  the  mere 
consequences  of  such  properties  and  without  admix- 
ture of  any  other  principle  whatever. 

Now  Psychology  has  compelled  us  to  the  convic- 
tion that  the  states  of  motion  —  which  can  only  be 
considered  as  events  that  happen  to  masses  of  the 
kind  referred  to  above  —  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  occasions  upon  which  there  arise  /;/  7is  spiritual 
processes,  such  as  sensations  or  feelings.  But  in 
what  way  these  occasions  bring  after  them  these 
results  so  unlike  themselves,  is  not  only  not  a  sub- 
ject of  empirical  knowledge,  but  it  is  even  possible 
to  see  that  we  can  never  reach  the  point  where  it 
would  be  for  us  a  matter  of  course  that  a  mode 
of  the  motion  of  these  masses,  however  wondrously 
intricate,  would  now  have  to  cease  to  remain  such, 
and  would  be  necessitated  to  transmute  itself  into 
quite  a  different  process,  of  sensation  or  of  feeling. 
According  to  all  the  axioms  of  which  we  avail  our- 
selves elsewhere  in  the  mechanical  consideration  of 


SPIRITUAL    AND    PHYSICAL    PROCESSES.  37 


nature,  from  motions  alone  nothing  but  a  transfer- 
ence, new  distribution,  propagation  or  arrest,  of 
inotiojis  can  originate.  A  spiritual  effect  can  be 
attached  to  them  only  indirectly  ;  to  wit,  by  means 
of  the  action  of  the  aforesaid  physical  processes  on 
a  subject  which,  in  its  own  nature,  possesses  that 
capacity  for  the  production  of  psychical  processes  in 
which  the  motions  themselves  are  wanting. 

As  here  in  the  small,  so  also  in  the  totality  of 
the  world,  a  Principle  of  barely  material  nature 
would  be  in  no  condition  to  produce  from  itself 
the  world  of  spiritual  processes. 

§  23.  Now  although  each  of  these  two  series  of 
events,  the  spiritual  and  the  physical  processes,  re- 
quires its  own  peculiar  'ground'  in  reality,  it  is 
nevertheless  not  necessary  that  the  '  ground '  of 
the  two  be  divided  into  two  different  species  of 
reality,  in  such  a  manner  that  there  may  be  mate- 
rial Things  devoid  of  all  spiritual  susceptibility,  and 
spirits  devoid  of  all  physical  property  and  activity. 
The  rather  may  we  first  examine  the  thought  that 
both  of  these  original  properties  are  in  fact  insep- 
arably united  in  every  existence ;  and  that,  on  ac- 
count of  one  of  them,  the  Existent  is  able  to  appear 
as,  and  to  pass  for,  matter  ;  while,  on  account  of 
the  other,  contrariwise,  it  leads  an  inner  life  and 
develops  spiritual  states  within  itself. 


38  pnii.(^sni-nv  or  RruGfox. 

For  the  psych()l()<^y  of  the  individual  bcin^,  this 
assumption,  on  closer  inspection,  is  shown  to  be  un- 
j:)roductive.  T'or  the  consideration  of  the  world  as  a 
whole  it,  at  first,  has  more  to  recommend  it  ;  and  it 
forms  the  text  of  the  spirited  descriptions  in  which 
Pantheism  glorifies  the  unresting  life  of  the  eter- 
nally One  Substance,  both  corporal  and  spiritual, 
which  in  ceaseless  vicissitude  fashions  its  individual 
shapes,  and  lets  them  be  absorbed  again  into  itself. 

The  more  definite  formulating  of  these  thoughts, 
in  the  case  of  Spinoza  and  Schelling,  arouses  our 
scruples  against  them.  When  the  former  (Spinoza) 
ascribes  to  the  Absolute  innumerable  kinds  of  doing 
and  acting  (*  Attributes  ')  that  admit  of  no  compari- 
son with  each  other,  —  of  which,  to  be  sure,  only 
two,  namely  Thought  and  Extension  {cogitatio  and 
extensio)  are  familiar  to  us  men,  —  such  manifold- 
ness  obviates  in  some  degree,  at  least  for  the 
imagination,  the  difficulty  which  lies  in  the  sin- 
gular circumstance,  that  just  those  two  attributes 
which  are  not  reducible  to  each  other  are  assumed 
to  form  the  essence  of  all  the  Existent.  To  find, 
however,  for  both  of  these  attributes  a  still  *  higher 
common  root,'  from  which  both  issued  as  mere  con- 
sequences, but  did  not  themselves  constitute  such 
root  (so  Schelling,)  is  a  problem  that  surpasses  all 
human   power  of  comprehension.     It  is  indeed  pos- 


THE    ABSOLUTE    AS    SPIRIT.  39 

sible  to  fashion  the  name  of  such  a  *  First  Absolute,' 
which  is  neither  real  nor  ideal,  and  yet  is  the  ground 
of  both.  But  it  is  not  possible  to  discover  any- 
thina:  in  the  entire  world,  of  which  it  could  be  said 
that  it  belongs  to  this  thing,  by  virtue  of  its  own 
nature,  to  be  esteemed  as  such  a  common  root. 

Since,  therefore,  the  goad  of  this  Dualism  cannot 
be  got  rid  of,  and  a  substance  that  is  merely  real 
and  acts  blindly  does  not  suffice  for  explaining  the 
world,  we  find  herein  one  of  the  motives  that  lead 
us  to  the  opposite  attempt,  —  to  the  pure  Spiritual- 
ism which  undertakes  to  comprehend  the  spirit 
alone  as  truly  existent,  and  all  else  as  its  product. 

§  24.  The  above-mentioned  views,  on  being  carried 
out  further,  are  wont  by  preference  to  invalidate  yet 
more  the  spiritual  element  of  the  Absolute.  Such 
views  customarily  announce  this  element  as  a  rea- 
son that  is  'per  se  unconscious '  ;  that  only  in  indi- 
vidual points  of  its  extreme  altitude,  in  individual 
spiritual   beings,  raises  itself  to  consciousness. 

Such  a  form  of  conception  as  the  foregoing  ap- 
pears inadmissible.  We  have  no  right  to  strip  off 
from  the  Reason,  which  we  invariably  first  learn 
by  experience  to  know  as  conscious,  this  predicate 
of  consciousness,  and  then  persuade  ourselves  that 
ausrht  intellicrible  is  left  still  remainins:.     Rather  is 


40  rniLOSoiMiv  of  keijcjion. 

it  true  that  only  one  definite  thought  admits  of 
being  connected  with  the  expression,  a  reason  act- 
ing unconsciously  in  the  world  ;  to  wit,  the  thought 
that  biifid  iorcQS  act  in  the  world,  which  are  not  in 
any  respect  reason,  but  which  in  fact  act  so  that 
their  results  are  the  same  as  those  which  a  reason 
acting  in  the  world  would  have  been  compelled  to 
desire. 

At  this  point  the  additional  misfortune  comes  to 
view,  that  the  aforesaid  proposition  does  not  ad- 
mit of  being  proved  with  reference  to  any  kind  of 
nature's  action.'  For,  in  order  to  do  this,  it  were 
necessary  to  show  that  the  results  of  her  action  are 
the  fulfilment  of  those  absolute  ends  which  reason 
would  have  been,  not  merely  able  to  propose  to  itself, 
but  compelled  to  propose  as  the  ones  justified  in 
the  highest  degree.  If,  on  the  contrary,  we  appraise 
what  is  actually  achieved  in  nature  at  a  lower  value, 
and  assume  that  it  could  have  been  still  better,  but 
is  not  so,  then  we  should  be  quite  as  much  justified 
in  speaking  of  an  ?^?/reason  acting  blindly  in  the 
world. 

But  apart  from  this,  it  is  clear  according  to  what 
was  said  above,  that  a  self-conscious  reason  could 
never  originate  as  a  final  product  from  such  powers  ; 
rather  should  we  have  to  be  satisfied  with  uncon- 
sciousness throughout  the  entire  world. 


IMPERSONAL    SPIRIT    IMPOSSIBLE.  4I 

It  is  wrong  also  to  appeal  to  the  analogy  of  our 
own  spirit,  which,  without  conscious  design,  in- 
stinctively  produces  many  of  its  rational  works ; 
such,  for  example,  as  those  of  art.  We  admit 
the  existence  of  such  activities  ;  but  we  know 
of  them  in  absolutely  no  other  case  than  that  of 
spirits  whose  nature  it  is  to  be  self-conscious : 
moreover,  they  appear  in  this  case  as  actions  ac- 
companying or  following  excitations  and  states 
which  were  originally  possible  only  in  conscious- 
ness, but  which  in  time  vanish  from  consciousness 
by  reciprocal  inhibition.  How,  on  the  other  hand, 
anything  similar  could  take  place  in  a  subject,  in 
whose  nature  no  consciousness  had  ever  preceded 
such  activities,  is  not  in  the  slightest  degree  com- 
prehensible. 

§  25.  In  connection  herewith,  the  same  view  is 
fond  of  speaking  of  an   iDipci'soiial  Spirit. 

This,  too,  is  much  easier  to  say  than  by  it  men- 
tally to  represent  anything.  It  is  quite  correct 
that,  in  our  own  spiritual  life,  we  experience 
manifold  states  in  which  all  attention  to  our  own 
self,  and  all  positing  of  that  self  over  opposite  to 
an  external  world,  are  completely  gone  ;  and  we 
so  lose  ourselves  in  the  content  of  a  sensation, 
an    idea,    a    feeling,    or   an    effort,    that    we    (so    to 


42  PHILOSOI'HV    OF    RELIGION. 

speak)  an-  for  a  time  nothing  but  this,  as  it  were, 
self-apprehending  content,  and  not  a  subject  which 
had  this  content  as  an  object  of  its  consciousness 
and  distinguished  it  from   itself. 

But  it  is  just  as  certain  that  we  know  such 
states  only  as  occurrences  in  an  otherwise  per- 
sonal spirit.  They  merely  prove  that  it  is  not 
necessary  for  the  personal  spirit  at  every  moment 
to  think  of  itself  as  different  from  the  content 
which  exactly  fills  out  its  consciousness.  But  they 
cannot  prove  that  anything  similar  is  possible 
without  the  personality,  which,  in  such  a  case, 
does  not  indeed  mentally  represent  itself,  but 
none  the  less  remains  in  fact  the  condition  of 
the  possibility  of  such  a  self-forgetfulness.  For 
all  the  aforesaid  sensations,  ideas,  or  feelings, 
in  which  we .  thus  lose  ourselves,  are  after  all 
never  thinkable  except  as  states  of  a  definite, 
self -identical  and  separate  spiritual  subject  ;  and 
not  the  least  consecutiveness,  nor  any  coherency 
according  to  law  between  these  different  spiritual 
states,  would  be  possible,  unless  the  personal  unity 
of  the  spirit,  which  is  by  no  means  apparent  in 
them,  were  for  all  that  the  real  ground  which 
unites  them  with  one  another. 


IMPERSONAL    SPIRIT    IMPOSSIBLE.  43 

§  26.  It  is  further  adduced  in  support  of  the 
above-mentioned  view  that  even  the  '  personality ' 
with  which  we  have  an  acquaintance,  —  to  wit, 
that  of  the  human  soul,  —  first  originates  in  the 
course  of  its  development.  As  originally  given 
there  exist,  it  is  said,  only  common  spiritual  capa- 
cities which,  by  means  of  favorable  circumstances, 
are  aroused  to  expression  in  such  manner  that, 
from  the  combination  of  these  expressions,  a 
reflection  directed  toward  self  and  a  self-con- 
sciousness    can    also    originate. 

Just  so,  it  is  claimed,  the  Absolute  at  first  is 
impersonal  Spirit.  At  this  point  views  are  di- 
vided :  one  makes  the  Absolute,  just  like  the 
finite  spirit,  attain  to  a  personality  of  its  own ; 
the  other  makes  it  always  remain  of  itself  imper- 
sonal and  only  assume  personal  form  in  individual 
ones  of  its  products,  that  is  in  finite  spirits. 

The  first  view  is  for  the  present  time  a  useless 
curiosity.  For  us  it  would  hardly  be  of  any 
value  religiously,  that  the  Absolute  has  attained 
to  personality  at  the  conclusion  of  its  develop- 
ment. On  the  contrary,  an  account  of  the  way 
in  which  this  result  is  reached  is  demanded  by 
no  religious  need,  but  at  the  very  most  only  by 
speculative  curiosity. 

The    other   view   would    be    compelled    to    assert 


44  ruiLosopHV  or  kkmgion. 


that  the  Absolute,  of  itself  unconscious  and  imper- 
sonal, j)ro(luccs  even  in  its  blind  development  the 
favoring;  conditions  under  which  its  own  products, 
the  finite  spirits,  developed  the  personality  denied 
to  itself.  This  is  likewise  an  opinion  that  answers 
to  no  religious  need  ;  and  least  of  all  to  the  neces- 
sity of  making  intelligible  from  a  single  real  prin- 
ciple, not  merely  the  external  course  of  the  world, 
but  also  its  moral  order,  and  the  fact  that  it  fur- 
nishes us  with  obligatory  ideals  of  the  Good  and 
the   Holy. 

In  this  way  it  is  made  apparent  that  very  pow- 
erful motives  impel  the  religious  spirit,  at  last, 
straight  to  the  conception  of  a  personal  God,  and 
do  not  permit  it  to  shrink  back  from  the  many 
difficulties  that  lie  in  this  conception  also. 


CHAPTER    III. 

THE    METAPHYSICAL    ATTRIBUTES    OF    GOD. 

§  27.  We  abandon  the  previous  train  of  thought 
and  now  consider  the  conception  of  God  as,  on 
the  basis  of  the  incentives  depicted  in  the  last 
chapter,  by  means  of  a  long  spiritual  labor  of  the 
centuries  and  essentially  harmonious,  it  lies  before 
us  perfected  in  the  monotheistic  religions.  We 
consider,  first,  the  formal  or  metaphysical  deter- 
minations. 

That  God  is  but  Oiie^  and  that  polytheism  is 
therefore  excluded,  we  pass  with  a  bare  allusion. 
Many  Gods,  if  each  lived  independent  in  his  own 
world,  would  be  a  useless  and  adventurous 
thought  ;  but  if  they  met  each  other  with  their 
activity  in  one  and  the  same  world,  then  they 
would  necessarily  be  finite  beings,  which  acted 
on  each  other  and  suffered  effects  from  each 
other  in  accordance  with  certain  laws  appointed 
over  them. 

The  religious  nature  does  not  understand  the 
'  Unity  of  God '  in  the  aforesaid  numerical  mean- 
ing. It  does  not  intend  to  affirm  that  God  is 
in    fact    only   one,    while    by    way    of    imagination 


46  PHILOSOIMIV    or    RELIGION. 


there  niiglU  }:)()s.sibly  be  beside  him  still  others 
of  his  own  kind.  It  means  rather  that  God  is 
an  o}ily  God  ;  that  is  to  say,  there  is  no  superior 
general  concept  of  a  God,  of  such  sort  that  all 
the  predicates  which  might  belong  to  the  actual 
God  as  an  example  of  this  concept  of  species, 
would  ensue  from  it  just  as  much  conditioned  and 
prescribed  as  in  the  case  of  every  finite  creature, 
from  whose  concept  of  species  ensues  the  limit 
within  which  its  properties  and  their  reciprocal 
combination   can  vary. 

This  absolute  independence  of  the  Highest  Prin- 
ciple, which  does  not  admit  of  its  being  in  any 
way  subordinated  to  one  still  higher,  —  as  though 
it  were  effect  or  even  mere  example  of  the  latter, 
—  will  appear  to  us  subsequently  in  the  different 
consequences  which  are  to  be  drawn  from  it,  as 
one  of  the  most  important  of  the  formal  deter- 
minations. 

§  28.  To  a  second  formal  predicate,  that  of 
Unchangeableness,  the  religious  feeling  does  not 
attach  the  same  meaning  as  seems  to  accord  with 
this  title. 

Perfectly  unchangeable  substances  would,  of 
course,  be  philosophically  useless  assumptions  even 
for    the    explanation    of    nature ;    but    still,    if    one 


THE  PREDICATE  OF  OMNIPRESENCE.       47 

chooses  to  avoid  certain  questions  as  to  first  prin- 
ciples, such  substances  always  admit  of  being  em- 
ployed for  the  intermediate  explanation  of  processes 
one  from  the  other.  A  God,  on  the  contrary,  who 
should  be  without  changeable  inner  states  forever 
perfectly  self-identical,  would  answer  to  no  religious 
need. 

We  need,  in  brief,  a  living  God ;  and,  there- 
fore, by  his  '  unchangeableness '  nothing  further  is 
meant  than  the  consistency  with  which  all  these 
inner  states  proceed  from  a  nature  that  remains 
the  same.  On  this  point  we  are  in  accord  with 
Metaphysic  also,  which  requires  of  the  nature  of 
all  substances  —  even  of  such  as  are  finite — only 
this  consistent  exclusiveness  of  the  series  of  forms 
within  which  each  being  among  them  varies ;  it 
does  not,  however,  require  the  monotony  and  rigid- 
ity of  a  perfect  unchanging  self-likeness. 

§  29.  A  third  formal  predicate.  Omnipresence, 
seems  only  at  first  sight  to  ascribe  to  God  an  at- 
tribute of  spatiality  such  as  we  otherwise  impute 
merely  to  matter.  The  religious  meaning  of  this 
expression  signifies  rather  the  opposite. 

Concerning  finite  things  we  know  that  if  they 
act  upon  each  other  immediately,  it  is  only  when 
in    spatial    contact,   and   therefore   where   they   are ; 


48  rmi.osoruv  ok  religion. 


on  tlic  contrai y,  if  tluy  acl  at  a  distance,  it  is  only 
mediately  (by  means  of  the  propagation  of  their 
first  action  to  elements  lyin<^  between)  :  or  we  know 
that,  if  wc  concede  to  them  an  immediate  action 
from  afar,  this  action  at  least  has  its  maximum 
when  the  nearness  is  greatest,  and  diminishes  as 
the  distance  increases. 

Both  limitations  are  suj)})osed  not  to  be  true  of 
God.  If  he  wills  to  act  upon  any  element  of  the 
world,  then  his  activity  is  supposed  not  to  have  to 
traverse  any  way,  long  or  short,  up  to  the  point 
where  such  clement  exists.  Converselv,  if  an  ele- 
ment  of  the  world  —  for  example,  a  finite  spirit 
with  his  prayer — wills  to  act  upon  God,  then  it  is 
not  necessary  to  traverse  any  way  in  order  to  dis- 
cover God,  as  though  he  had  a  definite  position  in 
space.  The  rather  is  the  activity  of  God  everywhere 
alike  immediately  and  perfectly  present,  without  dif- 
ference of  degree. 

Only  this  is  meant  by  'Omnipresence.'  On  the 
contrary,  no  one  ever  had  any  interest  in  ascribing 
positively  to  God  himself,  as  one  of  his  attributes, 
the  predicate  of  an  infinitely  great  extension  in 
space.  Quite  the  opposite,  the  simple  design  has 
been  held  of  denying  with  reference  to  him  in 
every  respect  that  power  to  put  under  conditions 
which  space-limitation  exercises  upon  the  recipro- 
cal action  of  finite  beings. 


THE    PREDICATE    OF    OMNIPOTENCE.  49 

§  30.  The  predicate  of  Omnipotence  obviously 
presupposes  that  conceptions  of  activity,  either 
barely  transforming  or  else  creative,  have  some 
applicability  to  God ;  and,  under  this  presupposi- 
tion, it  is  then  sought  to  exalt  the  power  of  God 
absolutely  above  all  bounds ;  but  in  the  ordinary 
conception  of  this  attribute  such  a  result  is  not 
obtained. 

The  simplest  interpretation  of  Omnipotence,  that 
"  God  can  do  all  possible,"  does  not  satisfy  the 
religious  feeling ;  we  should  thus  obtain  only  the 
relatively  greatest  one  of  those  finite  forces  which, 
collectively,  are  obliged  to  acknowledge  certain  lim- 
its of  'possibility'  that  stand  fixed  independently 
of  them.  God  would  therefore  be  subjected  to  a 
sphere  of  laws  antecedent  even  to  himself,  which 
would  determine  for  him  the  free  scope  of  his  power. 

The  other  explanation  — "  God  can  make  even 
the  impossible  to  be  possible  and  actual"  —  without 
doubt  expresses  the  real  heart-meaning  of  the  re- 
ligious feeling,  but,  in  the  aforesaid  way  of  formu- 
lating it,  appears  absurd  and  unthinkable.  For  all 
order,  all  consistency  and  all  coherency  of  the  world 
appear  to  depend  upon  the  limits  between  the 
joossible  and  the  impossible  being  absolutely  im- 
movable. If  that  which  is  of  itself  impossible  can 
once    be    made    possible    by    any    power    whatever, 


JO  rnii.osornv  of  kklkhox. 

then  every  sure  foundation  for  making  any  conclu- 
sion whatever  in  relation  to  the  coherency  of  the 
world   falls  away. 

But  even  this  last  explanation  does  the  very 
thing  for  which  it  finds  fault  with  the  first ;  it 
assumes  that  this  distinction  of  the  impossible 
from  the  possible  already  exists  independently  of 
God.  God  finds  them  both  already  determined  and 
authenticated  by  means  of  a  truth  that  is  independ- 
ent of  himself ;  and  only  in  practice  does  the  ca- 
pacity belong  to  him  of  withdrawing  aught  that  is 
subordinated  to  the  self-authenticated  conception 
of  the  impossible,  from  the  domain  of  this  concep- 
tion, and  of  disposing  it  under  the  conception  of 
the   possible. 

The  thought  mentioned  above  is  neither  sound 
in  general,  nor  is  such  an  omnipotence  actually 
unlimited.  Rather  must  we  arrive  at  such  an 
apprehension  of  God  as  makes  God  himself  to  be 
the  prime  reason  for  the  opposition  of  the  possible 
and  the  impossible  having  any  significance  at  all 
in  the  world  of  actual  existence. 

This  thought,  which  is  hard  to  define  in  the 
present  connection,  we  shall  pursue  further  later 
on.  For  our  immediate  purpose,  that  which  is  of 
religious  value  in  it  permits  of  being  most  simply 
and   effectively   expressed   in   the   not    quite   correct 


THE  PREDICATE  OF  ETERNITY.  5  I 

form  that  '*  God  can  do  even  the  impossible." 
This  form  at  least  states  one  thing  clearly,  —  to 
wit,  that  the  impossible  is  no  barrier  for  God. 

§  31.  The  predicate  of  Eternity  in  time  depends 
upon  different  motives ;  first,  as  may  be  readily 
understood,  upon  the  need  that  we  be  able  to  re- 
gard what  is  to  be  our  support  and  our  consolation 
as  at  no  time  ready  to  fail.  But  then,  apart  from 
every  religious  need,  eternal  duration  is  aestheti- 
cally an  imposing  idea  on  account  of  a  sublimity 
which  is  worthy  of  the  Absolute  Principle. 

But  the  aforesaid  expression,  nevertheless,  does 
not  itself  depend  upon  our  seeing  any  value  or  any 
advantage  in  the  bare  filling-up  of  infinite  time. 
Just  as  we  did  not  apprehend  omnipresence  as  a 
positive  magnitude  in  space,  but  only  as  the  nega- 
tion of  all  restrictive  significations  of  space  for  the 
action  of  God;  just  so,  'infinite  duration'  signifies 
only  the  perfect  independence  of  all  those  condi- 
tions that  change  in  time,  by  which  finite  beings 
are  constantly  confined  within  a  definite  tract  of 
their  possible  existence. 

§  32.  Moreover  '  Time '  also,  like  Space,  is  not 
to  be  thought  of  as  though  it  were  a  somehow 
self-existing    form,    and    as    though    God    had    only 


52  PHILOSOPHY    OF    RELIGION. 

the  capacity  of  -filling  it  up  by  his  existence,  how- 
ever far  it  may  extend.  But  the  difficult  at- 
tempts which  have  been  made  to  apprehend  this 
relation  otherwise,  —  to  consider  time  as  in  God, 
or  God  as  above  time,  —  we  must  defer  pro- 
visionally and  make  prominent  another  point  in- 
stead. 

God,  as  filling  eternal  time  in  a  perfectly  un 
changeable  way,  would  be  a  mental  representation 
of  no  service  for  religious  interests.  But  if  God 
is  living  and  the  subject  of  change,  —  that  is,  if 
anything  whatever  takes  place  within  him,  then 
it  follows  that  he  is  in  every  second  instant  an 
other  than  he  was  in  the  first  instant  preceding  ; 
—  unless  it  can  be  demonstrated  on  other  grounds 
in  what  way  that  '  Unity  '  of  his  Being  which  is 
for  us  indispensable  is  maintained  continuously 
through    the    course    of    his    changes    in    time. 

Now,  at  this  point  we  derive  from  Metaphysic  the 
conviction  that  such  *  Unity  of  a  Being  w^ith  itself ' 
certainly  presupposes  all  its  successive  states  to  be 
comprehensible  as  different  consequences  of  one  and 
the  same  nature,  and  —  in  brief  —  to  cohere  together 
in  accordance  with  one  and  the  same  formula  ;  but, 
likewise,  the  conviction  that  this  presupposition  is 
not  at  all  adequate.  For  if  wc  also,  the  thinking 
subjects,  in  the  series  of  states  a,  a^,  a,,  03,  .  .  .,  every- 


THE    UNITY    OF    SELF-CONSCIOUS    SPIRIT.  53 

where  observe  the  secondary  effect  of  the  original 
nature  a  of  a  being ;  and  if  we,  on  this  account, 
apprehend  such  a  series  as  the  history  of  one  and 
the  same  being  a :  still  it  is  in  this  way  by  no 
means  yet  proved,  that  this  is  more  than  a  subjec- 
tive apprehension  on  our  part;  —  that  is  to  say, 
that  the  a,  ai,  a..,  .  .  .,  are  not  different  successive 
beings  instead  of  only  successive  states  of  one  and 
the  same  Being  (a). 

If  the  latter  conclusion  is  to  be  proved,  then  only 
the  Being  a  itself  can  prove  it ;  and,  of  course,  only 
by  itself  doing  what,  previously,  merely  we,  the 
investigating  subjects,  have  done.  The  Being  a 
must  comprehend  itself  as  a  'unity';  must,  as 
such,  set  itself  over  against  the  series  a,  a^,  .  .  .,  as 
mere  states  of  its  own,  and  be  able  to  unite  these 
successive  states  into  one  synchronous  state  by 
means  of  recollection.  Expressed  in  simple  man- 
ner :  In  no  respect  can  we  assert  of  selfless 
'Things,'  but  only  of  a  self-conscious  'Spirit,'  that 
it  remains  in  the  course  of  its  history  one  and  the 
same  ;  and,  for  the  very  reason  that  only  it  actual- 
izes the  aforesaid  unity  by  means  of  this  deed  of 
self-consciousness.  Of  a  '  Thing,'  on  the  contrary, 
—  since  it  is  merely  subject  to  different  states  one 
after    another,    although    in    a    sequence   according 


54  PHILOSOPHY    OF    RELIGION. 

to   law, — there    is   no    decisive    test    by    which    to 

prove  the  fact  and  the  means  of  its   distinguishing 

itself   from    a    succession    of    different    and    merely 
related  Things. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

OF  THE  PERSONALITY  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE. 

§  33.  The  paradoxical  result  of  the  previous  re- 
flections is  as  follows :  If  all  the  predicates  of 
'unconditionateness'  are  to  be  valid  for  the  Highest 
Being,  then  one  condition  of  this  validity  lies  pre- 
cisely in  the  addition  of  a  last  formal  predicate,  — 
namely,  that  of  Personal  Existence. 

At  the  faith  in  this  '  personality  of  God '  the 
religious  faculty,  naturally  enough,  has  not  arrived 
by  the  above-mentioned  way,  but  from  familiar 
motives  that  lie  nearer  at  hand.  Against  this 
faith,  however,  philosophic  reflection  has  subse- 
quently been  very  unanimously  directed  with  the 
assertion:  'Personality'  is  conceivable  only  in  finite 
spirits,  and  in  this  case  rests  on  conditions  which 
can  have  no  significance  for  the  Absolute. 

The  above-mentioned  investigations  concerning 
the  possibility  or  impossibility  of  the  assumption 
of  a  '  personal  God '  should  be  briefly  repeated  in 
this  connection. 

§  34.  Two  thoughts  which  we  believe  ourselves 
obliged  to  distinguish,  lie  in  the  conception  of  'per- 
sonality.' 


56  pnii.nsoriiv  of  religion. 

First:  No  'personality,'  or  —  what  can  for  the 
moment  ]:)ass  as  identical  with  it  —  no  'self-con- 
sciousness '  is  conceivable  without  our  ascribing  to 
the  spiritual  subject,  to  which  it  is  to  belong,  an 
image  of  cognition  or  an  image  of  representation, 
of  that  which  this  subject  itself  is,  and  by  means 
of  which  it  distinguishes  itself  from  others.  Since 
these  images  of  cognition,  as  well  as  those  which 
we  project  for  ourselves  from  other  objects,  may 
be  more  or  less  either  correct  or  false  ;  therefore, 
self-consciousness  is  by  no  means  identical  with 
'adequate  self-cognition.'  We  are  rather  to  esti- 
mate the  different  degrees  of  its  clearness  and  per- 
fection exactly  according  to  the  measure  of  the 
conformity  of  its  content  with  the  actual  nature  of 
the  subject. 

But  the  mental  representation  of  the  aforesaid  pic- 
ture will  always  deserve  the  title  of  'self-conscious- 
ness'  so  long  as  it  contains  this  second  factor:  — 
to  wit,  so  long  as  the  other  additional  thought  is 
present,  that  this  mental  image  is  the  image  of 
ourselves,  and  is  by  no  means  distinguished  from 
any  other  image  merely  in  the  same  way  that  a 
second  object  is  distinguished  from  a  third ;  but 
that  it  is  rather  significant  of  somewhat  which,  as 
'  ego,'  is  to  be  placed  in  a  fundamental  and  incom- 
parable opposition  to  all  else.  This  second  trans- 
action we  consider  in  the  first  place. 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.  5/ 

§  35.  It  is  a  very  common  opinion  that  '  self-con- 
sciousness '  is  a  spiritual  phenomenon  which  develops 
very  gradually,  and  the  origin  and  necessary  con- 
ditions of  which,  accordingly,  have  a  history.     * 

Such  an  opinion  we  recognize  as  correct  only  in 
relation  to  the  first  of  the  points  distinguished 
above.  To  wit :  We  doubtless  do  not  arrive  at  the 
knowledge  of  the  properties  of  which  we  compose 
the  before-mentioned  mental  image,  or  at  the  con- 
tent of  the  image  of  ourselves  which  we  construct 
for  ourselves,  except  by  means  of  an  accumulation 
of  external  and  internal  experiences. 

But  in  relation  to  the  other  point  we  cannot 
assent  to  this  opinion.  It  does  not  admit  of  being 
shown  intelligibly,  how,  in  the  course  of  the  pro- 
jection of  manifold  mental  representations,  the 
moment  must  necessarily  at  some  time  arrive,  when 
we  should  be  compelled  to  consider  one  of  these 
representations,  not  merely  as  image  of  one  object 
which  is  distinguished  from  a  second  only  in  the 
same  way  as  the  latter  from  a  third,  but  precisely 
as  the  image  of  our  'ego,'  which  stands  in  that 
absolute  opposition  to  every  non-ego,  so  easily  in- 
telligible but  so  difficult  further  to  describe. 

It  will  be  found  that  the  apparent  '  origin '  of 
self-consciousness  in  this  sense  always  presupposes 
the   latent   previous   existence  of  its   most   essentia) 


58  PHiLOSoniv  or  kkmcion. 

element,  —  naniely,    of   a   sclf-fccliug    in     the    same 
sense. 

5  36.  The  materialistic  attempts  to  generate  self- 
consciousness  from  all  manner  of  motions  in  brain- 
atoms  returning  upon  themselves,  are  deserving  of 
no  respect.  As  they  are  unable  in  general  to  de- 
duce any  *  consciousness '  from  motions,  so  is  this 
return  of  the  motions  also  unable  to  generate  any 
jr^-consciousness. 

But,  on  the  whole,  the  frequent  philosophical 
assertions  —  Personality  can  only  be  generated  by 
an  activity  of  the  ego  proceeding  outward,  and  by 
a  resistance  of  the  non-ego  which  *  reflects '  this 
activity  upon  its  own  point  of  issue  —  are  not  a 
v.hit  better.  These  modes  of  speech  correspond 
to  absolutely  no  demonstrable  and  real  transaction. 
Such  an  activity  of  the  ego  proceeding  outward 
nowhere  admits  of  being  designated  by  name. 
The  analogy  that  it  is  thrown  back  like  rays  of 
light  from  the  non-ego,  is  a  mental  image  utterly 
without  real  motif,  and  one  under  which  it  is  not 
l)ossible  to  bring  any  actual  procedure.  The  con- 
clusion finally,  that,  this  activity  becomes  *  self-con- 
sciousness '  by  means  of  such  *  reflection,'  is  a  bare 
subreption.  For  it  is  precisely  by  this  means  that 
the  mere  return  of  the  activity  to  its  own  point  of 


THE    IDEA    OF    THE    EGO.  59 

issue  is  occasioned.  But  that  it  should  now  be 
compelled  to  apprehend  this  point  as  its  own  self, 
—  and  hence  the  precise  origin  of  self-conscious- 
ness,—  is  a  mere  supplement  of  thought  devoid  of 
all  basis. 

Only  those  attempts  would  deserve  consideration 
which  aim  to  show  how  the  soul  originally  pro- 
duces merely  intuitive  ideas,  and  then,  in  the  course 
of  the  reciprocal  actions  of  these  its  individual 
products,  projects  also  conceptions  of  non-intuitive 
subjects  to  which  the  aforesaid  ideas  belong  as 
predicates  ;  that  it  finally  succeeds  also  in  assign- 
ing by  thought  one  subject  to  the  totality  of  all 
its  inner  states ;  and  that  it  thus  generates  the 
consciousness  of  the  *  ego '  as  of  that  one  which 
is  at  the  same  time  subject  and  object  of  the  act 
of  ideation. 

§  37.  It  is  to  be  alleged,  in  the  first  place,  against 
such  attempts  as  the  foregoing,  that  identity  of 
ideating  subject  and  ideated  object  is  the  general 
notion  of  every  personality  ;  and  that,  therefore,  *  I  * 
is  not  by  this  means  distinguishable  from  *  thou ' 
and  'he.'  And  yet  'self-consciousness'  or  'person- 
ality '  obviously  does  not  consist  in  subsuming 
ourselves,  together  with  all  others  under  one  and 
the    same    general    notion  :    but    it    consists    in    our 


60  IMIILOSOPHV    OF    RELIGION. 


iiisti/iiriiis/iifiis  ourselves  from  all  others  within  this 
i^cncral  notion. 

h  might  now  be  said:  'I'  am  subject  and  ob- 
ject of  my  thou<;hts,  *  thou  '  art  subject  and  object 
of  thine,  etc.  If  distinguishing  thus  is  not  to  bring 
us  round  and  round  in  a  constant  circle,  then  the 
distinction  between  'mine'  and  'thine'  —  the  one 
we  need  to  make  —  cannot  be  deduced  from  the 
fact  that  the  *  mine  '  belongs  to  the  *  I,'  and  the 
'  thine '  to  the  *  thou  '  ;  but  between  both  of  them 
there  must  already  exist  a  distinction  that  is  abso- 
lutely clear,  immediately  given,  and  in  need  of  no 
deduction  at  all. 

Such  now  is  actually  the  case ;  and  the  distinc- 
tion depends  upon  this,  that  we  are  in  general 
unable  to  think  of  any  soul  exclusively  as  a  being 
active  merely  in  the  formation  of  ideas.  Every 
soul  is  rather  likewise  capable  of  experiencing 
feelings  of  pleasure  and  of  pain,  and  of  combining 
these  feelings  with  the  content  of  ideas.  Simply 
by  means  of  the  fact  that  the  idea  of  any  state 
whatsoever  is  combined  with  a  feeling  of  pleasure 
or  pain,  is  such  state  authenticated  as  02ir  own^ 
and  no  longer  passes  merely  as  the  state  of  some 
being  or  other. 

We  express  the  matter  simply  by  means  of  the 
following   antithesis :     Granted    that    some    superior 


FEELING    AND    SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.  6 1 

spirit  possesses  so  perfect  an  intelligence  as  to 
have  a  quite  adequate  cognition  of  all  things,  and 
of  its  own  being  as  well,  and  yet  is  utterly  lack- 
ing in  the  faculty  for  pleasure  and  pain ;  and  that 
every  conceivable  content  is  therefore  as  indif- 
ferent to  it  as  is  every  other.  Then  such  a  spirit 
will  not  merely  cognize  itself,  but  will  also  know 
that  in  this  case  the  cognizing  subject  is  identical 
with  the  object  cognized.  It  will,  however,  at  the 
same  time  cognize  the  fact,  that  the  case  of  such 
identity  may  occur  precisely  so  millions  of  times 
in  other  beings  ;  and  it  will  have  no  motive  at  all 
to  regard  one  of  these  cases  —  just  that  one  which 
occurs  in  its  own  self  —  as  something  special,  and 
to  distinguish  this  case  from  those  others ;  it  will 
not,  therefore,  apprehend  itself  as  an  *  ego '  set 
over  against  some  other  as  the  ^non-ego.'  On 
the  other  hand,  an  animal  of  the  lowest  order, 
that  has  scarcely  any  cognition  of  itself  at  all, 
but  has  indeed  feeling  for  pleasure  and  pain,  will 
never  confound  itself  with  the  external  world. 
When  it  feels  a  smart,  it  will  experience  this 
state  as  one  belonging  to  itself  alone ;  and  just 
by  this  means  will  it  feel  itself  as  an  'ego'  in 
opposition  to  the  whole  world,  although  it  would 
not  know  at  all  how  to  specify  precisely  in  what 
its  own  being  consists. 


62  niiLosoriiv  oi    kiclk.ion. 

§  38.  Wc  arrive  at  the  same  goal  by  another 
way.  We  often  hear  it  said:  'Ego'  and  'non- 
ego*  are  two  correlative  conceptions,  neither  of 
which  has  in  general  any  significance  apart  from 
its  opposition  to  the  other.  Therefore,  —  it  is  said, 
—  even  the  idea  of  the  'ego'  can  originate  only  at 
the  moment  when  that  of  the  *  non-ego '  likewise 
originates.  On  this  account,  *  personality '  is  pos- 
sible only  for  finite  beings  which  can  be  limited 
by  a  non-ego. 

The  foregoing  three  propositions  have  really  no 
inner  connection  with  each  other.  The  first  of 
them  must  be  pronounced  perfectly  absurd.  Two 
conceptions,  each  of  which  should  have  a  meaning 
only  as  a  negation  of  the  other,  and  should  signify 
nothing  further,  would  both  of  them  have  no  mean- 
ing at  all,  and  would  not  even  acquire  any  by  their 
being  opposed  to  each  other.  One  of  the  two 
must  necessarily  be  independently  determined  and 
signify  something. 

On  consideration  of  our  case  we  find  the  ques- 
tion to  be  :  If  '  ego '  and  '  non-ego '  were  two 
such  conceptions,  each  of  which  contained  barely 
the  negation  of  the  other :  by  what  means  would 
the  soul  then  be  induced,  at  the  moment  of  the 
simultaneous  origin  of  both,  to  rank  itself  under 
the  conception  of  the  *  ego '  rather  than  under  that 


THE  TERM  '  NON-EGO  '  RELATIVE.         6^ 

of  the  '  non-ego '  ;  and  what  does  it  gain  thereby  if 
it  does  the  one  and  forbears  the  other  ?  To  such 
a  question  no  answer  is  possible  but  just  this  ; 
that  one  of  the  two  conceptions  signifies  some- 
what independently  determined,  and  on  this  ac- 
count the  spirit  applies  it  to  itself,  or  does  not  so 
apply  it.  Now,  without  going  further,  the  expres- 
sions themselves  show  that  this  independent  sig- 
nificance belongs  only  to  the  '  ego '  as  positively 
apprehended.  What  is  meant  by  the  term  is 
directly  obvious :  what,  on  the  contrary,  is  meant 
by  the  negative  expression  '  non-ego '  is  in  a  pre- 
liminary way  obscure ;  and  only  thus  much  is 
known  about  it,  —  namely,  that  it  is  not  the  'ego.' 
But  this  is  just  what  would  be  achieved  by  the 
aforesaid  immediate  feeling,  by  which  the  ego  posi- 
tively apprehends  what  belongs  to  it  as  its  own; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  at  first  excludes  from 
'  itself '  in  a  merely  negative  way  what  does  not 
belong  to   it. 

§  39.  The  above  position  being  conceded,  it  is 
still  always  possible  to  say :  This  '  feeling  of  the 
ego,'  although  in  itself  of  a  definite  content,  which 
does  not  primarily  originate  by  means  of  its  op- 
position to  the  non-ego,  nevertheless,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  cannot  actually  occur  except  at  the  moment 


64  PlIILOSOrilV    ol      RELIGION. 

of  such  an  opposition.  To  see  colors  is  also  an 
original  capacity  of  the  soul,  and  could  not  be  pro- 
cured for  it  by  means  of  any  waves  of  ether,  if  it 
did  not  of  itself  jiossess  the  capacity ;  yet  we  do 
see  colors  solely  in  case  waves  of  ether  act  on  us. 
Just  so  we  feel  ourselves  as  *ego,'  only  in  case  an 
opposed  non-ego  acts  on  us. 

On  this  point  it  is  now  to  be  observed,  that  the 
possibility  of  personality  is  in  any  case  erroneously 
attached  to  the  opposition  to  a  real  non-ego ;  as 
though  by  means  of  it  that  being,  which  in  conse- 
quence thereof  then  feels  itself  as  *ego,'  became 
really  limited. 

A  reciprocal  action  with  a  real  non-ego,  of  such 
kind  that  this  as  such  might  enter  into  consciousness 
and  the  ego  thus  be  posited  in  opposition  to  this  per- 
ceived non-ego,  never  occurs  at  all.  In  all  sensations 
and  perceptions,  what  enters  consciousness  in  con- 
sequence of  such  an  influence,  is  invariably  nothing 
but  some  inner  state  belonging  to  the  spiritual 
being, — the  sensation  or  mental  representation  it- 
self ;  it  is  never  the  reality  by  means  of  which  the 
state  is  brought  about. 

From  these  inner  states  the  entire  subsequent 
development  of  the  spiritual  life,  and  therefore  that 
of  the  personality,  proceeds.  It  suffices  for  laying 
the  foundation  of  the  latter,  if  a  si)iritual  being  has 


THE    EXCITATION    OF    THE    EGO.  6$ 

the  faculty  of  apprehending-  itself  as  'I'  in  opposi- 
tion to  its  own  states,  which  are  only  its  '  states ' 
and  not  'I.'  A  relation  to  an  external  reality  is  not 
necessary  ;  and,  consequently,  '  personality '  also  is 
not  bound  to  the  condition  oi  fijiitciicss, — to  wit, 
to  that  of  being  limited  by  another  reality  of  the 
same  kind. 

§  40.  It  may  nevertheless  always  be  said :  Even 
if,  in  a  course  of  thought  that  is  once  in  process, 
this  world  of  thoughts  can  serve  as  the  non-ego 
in  opposition  to  which  the  thinking  spirit  knows 
itself  as  the  ego,  still  the  first  excitation  of  such 
process  of  thought  needs  the  influence  from  without 
which  can  only  be  given  by  an  actual  reality  affect- 
ing the  senses.  But  this  objection  unwarrantably 
carries  over  what  takes  place  as  a  matter  of  fact 
in  the  case  of  us  men,  as  though  it  were  indispen- 
sable to  every  personality. 

In  all  attempts  at  a  physical  explanation  of  the 
world,  we  are  at  last  under  the  necessity  of  recog- 
nizing, not  merely  certain  real  elements,  but  also 
certain  motions  of  the  same,  as  original  data;  and 
it  is  of  no  advantage  to  search  further  for  the 
causes  of  these  motions  also,  —  since  they  could 
only  consist  of  still  other  motions  ;  nor  is  it  con- 
ceivable   how  we    are    ever  to    get    from  a  state  of 


66  piuLosornv  of  keligion. 


equilibrium    or   rest    as    orii;inally   assumed,    to    dis- 
turbance of  equilibrium   or  to  motion. 

Only  the  same  concession,  and  no  more,  is  re- 
quired in  relation  to  the  Infinite  Spirit.  It  is  not 
to  be  thought  of  as  somewhat  which  it  were  barely 
possible  to  imagine,  but  as  somewhat  which  is  im- 
agined as  eternally  and  unceasingly  actual ;  —  some- 
what to  which  no  such  state  of  rest  was  ever 
antecedent,  as  a  state  from  which  it  would  have 
been  obliged  to  be  extricated  by  means  of  special 
influence. 

§  41.  All  further  inquiries  concerning  this  mat- 
ter (as  to  what,  perhaps,  gives  conditions  to  this 
eternal  movement  of  thought  with  respect  to  its 
content  and  its  direction)  must,  of  course,  remain 
unanswered.  Nevertheless  it  can  be  shown  —  not, 
indeed,  with  a  strictness  that  satisfies  the  demands 
of  science,  but  still  in  a  manner  intelligible  to 
imagination,  —  why  the  matter  stands  with  us  men 
in  that  different  fashion  which  we  should  not  be 
justified  in  wanting  to  carry  over  and  apply  to 
God. 

"When  treating  of  'Omnipresence'  allusion  was 
made  to  the  truth,  that  God,  who  is  the  truly 
Existent  in  all  Things  and  comprises  them  all  as 
mere  modifications  of  his  Being,   stands  in  need  of 


FINITE    SPIRITS    DEPEND    ON    THINGS.  (>'J 


no  mediation  through  transmitted  effects,  in  order 
to  be  acquainted  with  the  individual  elements  of 
the  world  and  the  states  belonging  to  them.  Every 
finite  spirit,  however,  has  its  existence  only  from 
a  definite  point  of  time  onward,  and  has  in  the 
coherence  of  all  Things  a  determinate  position  in 
the  system,  which  assigns  to  it  also  a  limited  place 
in  space. 

Now  it  follows  from  the  above-mentioned  truth, 
that  finite  spirits,  who  have  very  much  outside  of 
themselves  which  they  themselves  arc  not,  stand 
in  absolute  need  of  a  real  outside  world  and  of  its 
effects,  in  order  to  attain  to  the  development  of 
the  life  of  thought  possible  to  them. 

It  is  intelligible,  further,  that  finite  spirits  who 
are  not  the  Absolute  itself  but  only  modifications 
or  fragments  of  the  same,  and  yet  likewise  possess 
all  their  existence  only  through  this  Absolute,  do 
constantly,  in  case  they  reflect  upon  themselves, 
suppose  that  they  find  an  obscure  germ  in  their 
own  being,  —  to  wit,  just  this  power  of  the  Absolute 
itself.  This  power  it  is  which  works  through  and 
through  them,  and,  without  their  own  assistance, 
prescribes  for  them  the  universal  forms  of  their 
spiritual  activity,  their  sensation,  imagination,  judg- 
ment, etc.  ;  and  which  permits  them  only  within  nar- 
row   limits    to    dispose    further    of    this    dowry,  and 


6S  I'lllLUbOl'liV    Ul-     KELKjION. 

to  pursue  their  special  ends.  That  is  to  say, 
therefore:  *  Personality '  is  in  ///^v//  only  very  im- 
perfectly accom})lishe(l.  There  remains  something 
back  in  the  e^o,  which  it  cannot  itself  explain. 
This  is  a  fact  which  is  corroborated  by  the  course 
of  Psycholo<^y,  wherein  always  at  last  the  question 
recurs,  —  What  then  really  are  we  ?  and  can  never 
be  answered  to  our  perfect  satisfaction. 

Finally,  it  does  not  indeed  admit  of  direct  proof, 
but  is  none  the  less  a  probable  assumption,  that 
the  laws  of  the  psychical  mechanism  to  which  our 
inner  life  is  subjected  are  also  connected  with  this 
'finiteness.'  From  them  it  follows,  how^ever,  that 
our  ideas  inhibit  one  another  ;  that  only  a  small 
number  of  them  is  at  any  time  present  in  con- 
sciousness ;  that  the  forgotten  ones  return,  indeed, 
to  our  recollection  in  accordance  wdth  general  law^s, 
but  not  always  in  a  manner  corresponding  to  our 
momentary  need.  Hence  it  comes  about  that  we 
frequently  over-hasten  ;  that  we  permit  certain 
measures  of  conception  which  are  just  present  in 
consciousness,  partially  to  pass  over  into  transac- 
tions which  we  later,  when  \\c  have  collected  our- 
selves, may  no  longer  recognize  as  our  own  ;  that, 
finally,  we  forget  very  much,  and  with  increasing 
age  can  no  longer  transport  ourselves  back  into 
the  frames  of  mind,  feelings  and  enthusiasms  of 
the   earlier  epochs  of  life. 


THE    INFINITE    A    PERFECT    PERSONALITY.  69 

All  these  hindrances  of  a  perfect  '  personality ' 
we  can  imagine  as  not  existent  in  the  Infinite 
Spirit.  On  this  account,  we  conclude  with  the 
assertion  which  is  exactly  the  opposite  of  the 
customary  one :  Perfect  personality  is  compatible 
only  with  the  conception  of  an  Infinite  Being  ;  for 
finite  beings  only  an  approximation  to  this  is  at- 
tainable. 


CHAPTER    V. 

OF    THE    CON'CEPTIOX    OT    CREATION. 

§  42.  We  reserve  the  further  concrete  predi- 
cates, chiefly  of  an  ethical  kind,  by  which  we 
have  to  complete  the  still  abstract  conception  of 
an  infinite  personality,  until  after  we  have  consid- 
ered the  relation  of  this  personality  to  the  world. 
And  this  relation  itself  we  treat  for  convenience 
under  the  three  distinctive  names  of  Creation, 
Preserv^ation   and   Government. 

In  relation  to  the  first  topic,  we  omit  all  ancient 
and  modern  cosmogonies,  such  as  intend  to  fur- 
nish an  intuitive  picture  of  the  process  of  *  crea- 
tion '  and  of  the  succession  of  particular  creative 
acts  ;  —  a  picture,  which  is  in  general  impossible, 
and  in  particulars  not  to  be  established  with  any 
certainty.  Our  design  is  merely  to  show  what 
fundamental  conceptions  admit  of  being  formed 
concerning  that  relation  of  God  to  the  world 
from  which  the  creation  proceeds,  or  in  which  it 
consists,   or  which    is    established    by   means    of    it. 

We  divide  the  essentially  different  views,  which 
are  possible  on  this  subject,  into  the  three  fol- 
lowing :    the   first    of  which    attempts    to    trace    the 


CREATION  NOT  DEVELOPMENT.  71 

world  to  the  "consistent  development  of  the 
nature  of  God,"  the  second  to  his  will,  the  third 
to  a  creative  act. 

§  43.  The  first  view,  crudely  elaborated  and 
satisfying  merely  to  the  imagination  but  not  to 
speculation,  appears  in  all  the  emanation  theories 
of  ancient  and  modern  times.  This  we  exclude 
from  our  investigation. 

On  the  contrary,  the  conception  of  the  world 
as  a  *  necessary,  involuntary,  and  inevitable  devel- 
opment of  the  nature  of  God,'  which  rests  essen- 
tially upon  the  foundation  of  modern  scientific 
views,  is  worthy  of   consideration. 

So  far  as  this  view  endeavors  to  exclude  a  God 
who  rules  without  principle  in  blind  arbitrariness, 
it  is  correct ;  and  in  this  respect  corresponds  also 
to  our  religious  need.  But  we  must  resist  with 
the  greatest  possible  decisiveness  the  further 
apotheosis  of  the  notion  of  '  development '  conse- 
quent upon  this  view,  which  it  is  customary  just 
now  to  express  and  to  extol  with  such  great  em- 
phasis, as  though  it  were  identical,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  with  all  that  is  great  and  sublime  and  holy. 

If  it  were  only  a  question  concerning  a  theo- 
retic explanation  of  the  course  of  the  world,  then 
such    a   conception  would    be    satisfactory.      But    it 


72  I'HILOSOrilV    OF    RELIGION. 

is  wholly  useless  from  the  reH<2^ious  point  of  view, 
because  it  leads  consistently  to  nothing;  but  a 
thorougli-going  Determinism,  accordiuL;  to  which 
not  only  is  every  thing  that  must  ha})pen,  in  case 
certain  conditions  occur,  appointed  in  pursuance  of 
general  laws  ;  but  according  to  wliich  even  the  suc- 
cessive occurrence  of  these  conditions,  and  conse- 
quently the  whole  of  history  with  all  its  details,  is 
predetermined. 

In  such  a  mechanical  contrivance  there  is  no 
place  whatever  for  any  *  freedom  '  or  *  activity,'  or 
for  an  effort  that  shall  produce  aught  which  does 
not  originate  from  the  mechanism  itself.  Religious 
opinion  assumes  rather  that,  while  there  are  uni- 
versal laws,  without  whose  efficacy  no  'design* 
whatever  would  be  able  by  definite  means  to  attain 
to  a  definite  goal,  there  is  however  at  the  same 
time,  on  the  basis  and  in  the  domain  of  this  reign 
of  law,  a  free,  voluntary  activity,  which,  by  the 
use  and  combination  of  the  given  elements  acting 
in  accordance  with  law,  produces  that  even,  which 
would  have  no  existence  without  such  activity. 

The  above-mentioned  assumption  has  its  diffi- 
culties. Until,  however,  it  is  shown  decisively  to 
be  impossible,  the  religious  feeling  will  never  re- 
turn to  the  thought  of  an  *  undesigned,  inevitable 
development '  of  the  world  from  the  nature  of  God, 


CREATIVE    WILL    NOT    MOMENTARY.  -J ^ 

but  will   derive   it    from   an   act   of  the   divine   will, 
without  which  it  would  not  have  existed. 

§  44.  In  speaking  of  the  will  of  God,  we  natu- 
rally think  first  of  the  analogy  of  our  own  will  ; 
we  may  not  however  summarily  transfer  to  the 
former  that  which   is  peculiar  to   the   latter. 

Now  the  aims  to  which  our  will  can  be  directed, 
are  only  given  to  us  finite  beings  progressively 
by  means  of  experience.  Hence  under  the  term 
*  will '  we  conceive  primarily  of  a  spiritual  activity 
momentarily  awakening,  which  is  directed  chiefly  to 
the  production  of  a  state  not  yet  existing,  or  to 
the  change  of  a  state  already  existing.  Even  in 
those  cases  in  which  we  '  will '  nothing  new  but 
merely  the  status  qiio^  we  become  conscious  of 
this  act  of  will,  at  least  distinctly  so,  only  if 
something  threatens  to  disturb  this  state  that  has 
been   '  willed '  by  us. 

The  foregoing  conceptions  are  not  applicable  to 
the  creative  will  of  God.  Although  the  imagi- 
nation naturally  represents  the  dependence  of  the 
world  upon  the  will  of  God  in  the  most  forcible 
manner  by  making  a  period  of  time  precede  in 
which  even  this  creative  will  of  God  had  no 
existence ;  still  there  is  no  ground  whatever  for 
forming    a    philosophical    tenet    out    of    this    view, 


74  PTTTI.OSfMMIV    OF    RKLFGION. 

—  harmless  as  it  is  to  religion,  —  and  for  speaking 
of  an  inner  life  in  God,  which,  after  this  period, 
has  proceeded  to  the  decision  to  create  and  to  its 
execution.  Besides  it  would  be  impossible  to  fill 
this  space  of  time  with  anything  but  a  delusive 
history  of  development,  in  which  the  systematic 
coherence  of  all  the  thoughts,  by  uniting  which 
we  endeavor  to  interpret  for  ourselves  the  being 
of  God,  would  be  fictitiously  converted  into  a  chro- 
nological sequence  ;  and  by  this  means  the  nature 
of  God  would  for  the  first  time  become  completely 
realized. 

This  is,  philosophically  considered,  erroneous, 
and  religiously  devoid  of  all  significance :  we  abide 
therefore  by  the  assumption,  that  the  'will  to 
create '  is  an  absolutely  eternal  predicate  of  God, 
and  ought  not  to  be  used  to  designate  a  deed  of 
his  so  much  as  the  absolute  dependence  of  the 
world  upon  his  will  in  contradistinction  to  its  in- 
voluntary *  emanation  '  from  his  nature. 

§  45.  With  the  foregoing  assertion,  however, 
there  seems  to  vanish  something  which  we  regard 
as  necessary  for  the  religious  conception  of  crea- 
tion ;  to  wit,  a  will  which  is  constantly  existent,  has 
no  longer  the  character  of  a  deed.  In  order  that 
will    may    be    distinguished    from    that    involuntary 


WILLING    CONSIDERED    AS    DEED.  75 

development,  from  which  we  intended  to  distin- 
guish it,  it  seems  necessary  that  some  deed  or 
work  be  added  to  the  act  of  will,  by  whose  accom- 
plishment alone  that  which  is  willed  truly  becomes 
the  complete  possession  of  the  one  who  wills,  and 
at  the  same  time  becomes  a  reality.  There  is  in- 
volved herein  an  undoubtedly  genuine  religious 
need,  but  it  is  wrongly  formulated  in  dependence 
upon  analogies  derived  from  our  own  willing  and 
doing,  which  are  not  transferable  to  God. 

In  the  first  place  as  regards  the  efficacy  of  our 
own  will,  wx  know  psychologically  that  our  'will- 
ing '  can  never  do  anything  else  but  produce  a 
definite  psychical  state  within  us  (an  idea,  a  feel- 
ing, a  wdsh).  With  this  state,  as  soon  as  it  is 
once  in  existence,  an  order  of  nature  under  the 
control  of  general  law,  wholly  independent  of  our 
volition  and  hardly  accessible  to  our  intelligence, 
has  connected  a  definite  result  ;  and  this  result 
then  originates  without  our  being  able  to  compre- 
hend the  process  of  its  origination  or  to  con- 
tribute   anything   further   to    it. 

Now  we  believe  to  be  sure  that,  in  the 
performance  of  our  corporal  movements,  we  feel 
at  once  the  transition  of  our  will  to  the  limbs, 
and  that  to  a  certain  extent  we  observe  the 
will    at    its  work,   by  which    it    brings    to    pass    the 


^6  PHILOSOPHY    OF    RELIGION. 


effect.  But  it  is  known  psycholo<:^ically,  that  we 
actually  foci  in  this  case  only  the  changes,  which 
the  will,  in  a  manner  wholly  beyond  the  power 
of  observation,  has  already  produced  in  the  limbs, 
and  from  which,  in  a  supplemental  way,  the  sen- 
sations of  weariness  and  exertion  are  produced  in 
the  consciousness.  These  feelings  therefore  do  not 
show  us  how  those  movements  are  produced  by 
us  ;  but  they  only  show  how  much  disturbance  our 
organism  has  experienced,  in  consequence  of  those 
movements  having  been  [?ttached  to  the  action  of 
our  will,  in  accordance  with  an  order  of  nature 
unknown  to  us. 

If  therefore  we  recognize  as  our  own  '  deed  ' 
an  effect  which  issues  from  us  only  in  case  we 
have  had,  at  the  time  of  its  accomplishment,  all 
the  aforesaid  feelings,  then  this  analogy  of  the 
human  will  cannot  be  transferred  to  God.  For 
this  apparent  activity  in  accomplishing  something 
beyond  the  bare  action  of  willing  is  in  truth 
merely  a  witness  to  the  powerlessness  of  our 
will,  which  effects  something  only  in  case  a 
higher  power  has  united  with  it  the  origination 
of   changes    in    external    objects. 

In  this  sense,  therefore,  we  may  not,  in  addi- 
tion to  the  creative  will  of  God,  still  further 
postulate    a    special    creative    deed ;    but    we    must 


REALIZATION    OF    THE    DIVINE    WILL.  JJ 

be  satisfied  with  the  thought  that  the  will  of  the 
Supreme  Being  is  without  further  procedure  the 
realization    of   that    which    He    wills.  . 

§  46.  But  after  all  there  remains  a  genuine 
religious  need,  which  was  expressed,  although 
wrongly,  by  the  demand  for  a  divine  work  of 
creation. 

The  value  of  the  feelings,  to  which  we  referred, 
does  not  consist  in  the  fact  that  they  brought  to 
our  view  the  modus  agendi  of  our  will,  but  that  at 
each  minutest  instant  they  furnished  us  the  knowl- 
edge as  to  how  far  the  realization  of  its  activity 
had  already  advanced.  Suppose,  for  example,  that 
we  give  our  arm  a  wide  swing,  then  we  have  at 
each  minutest  point  of  time  a  new  sensation  which 
discloses  to  us  the  magnitude  of  the  breadth  of 
the  movement  already  executed  ;  and  therefore 
the  progress  of  our  wills'  mode  of  operation, 
although  in  itself  unobserved,  is  noted  by  us 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  move- 
ment. Now  it  is  precisely  because  in  such  a 
case  our  consciousness  always  has  an  immediate 
feeling  in  conjunction  with  the  product  of  the 
will,  that  such  movements  appear  as,  in  the  strict- 
est sense,  our  own  living  deed.  On  the  contrary, 
in   the   case   of  the   stone    that  flies  away  from  the 


^8  PHILOSOPHY    OF    RELIGION. 


hand  at  the  completion  of  that  movement  of  the 
arm,  although  it  has  in  fact  got  its  velocity  by 
means  of  us,  still  we  have  no  immediate  sensation 
of  its  further  movement.  While  this  movement, 
therefore,  as  well  as  its  subsequent  effects  upon 
other  objects,  seem  to  us  to  be  consequences  of 
our  deed,  they  no  longer  seem  to  be  our  own  ac- 
tivity itself. 

Now  it  is  the  counterpart  of  just  this,  which 
it  is  really  intended  to  exclude  from  the  concep- 
tion of  the  divine  creative  work.  It  is  not  to  be 
supposed  that  the  act  of  will  originates  a  bare 
result  in  which  the  consciousness  of  the  one  who 
wills  were  no  longer  present  ;  but  it  is  to  be  sup- 
posed that  the  creative  will  remains  in  that  con- 
stant feeling  in  conjunction  with  the  state  of  its 
product,  which  we  men  experience  only  on  occasion 
of  the  movements  of  our  own  body,  and  not  on 
occasion  of  the  movements  of  external  objects  in- 
directly produced. 

Now  because  this  feeling  in  our  case  is  psycho- 
logically connected  with  the  effort  and  labor,  which 
are  simply  a  consequence  of  our  finite  nature,  some 
have  arrived  at  the  false  conception  that  this  must 
be  so  even  in  the  case  of  God  Himself;  and  on 
this  account  have  demanded  the  aforesaid  special 
work  of  creation. 


NO    PROCESS    OF    CREATIOX.  79 

§  47.  The  sum  and  substance  of  the  preceding 
discussion  is,  that  the  conception  of  creation  prop- 
erly signifies  nothing  more  than  this  ;  that  the  world, 
with  respect  to  its  existence  as  well  as  its  content, 
is  completely  dependent  upon  the  will  of  God,  and 
not  a  mere  involuntary  '  development '  of  his 
nature ;  that  it  proceeds,  however,  only  from  the 
will  and  not  from  a  special  work  of  God,  —  this 
latter  conception  being  always  applicable  only  in 
cases  where  a  will  endeavors  to  realize  its  pur- 
pose in  conflict  with  an  existing  world  that  is 
independent  of  it  :  whereas  of  God  we  in  fact 
assert  that  He  "  has  created  the  world  out  of 
nothing,"  —  a  strange  expression,  which  strictly 
interpreted  means  to  say,  in  a  merely  negative 
manner,  that  there  is  nothing  out  of  which  God 
constructed  the  world  ;  and  which  then  whimsi- 
cally makes  this  Nothing  appear  again  as  a  sort 
of  '  stuff '  from  which   it  is  created. 

There  can  be  no  consistent  description  of  the 
process  of  creation,  for  the  reason  that  there  is 
no  such  process.  Such  process  in  fact,  whenever 
the  attempt  has  been  made  to  imagine  it,  has 
always  presupposed  in  turn  the  existence  of 
another  world,  and  of  certain  forms  of  happening 
already  in   use   in   it. 

In    regard    still    further  to    the    content    of    crea- 


So  PHILOSOPHY    OK    RELIGION. 


tion,  it  would  l)c  from  a  relij^ious  point  of  view 
an  object  of  interest  for  us,  only  in  case  we  con- 
ceive withal  of  a  plan  which  is  to  be  realized  in 
the  world  ;  and  this  subject  is  to  be  discussed 
under  the  head  of  the  conception  of  'Government.' 


CHAPTER   VI. 


OF    PRESERVATION. 


§  48.  To  ascribe  the  preservation  of  the  world 
to  a  special  divine  activity,  may  seem  to  be  a  super- 
fluous thought.  In  fact,  the  common  opinion  of 
natural  philosophy  amounts  to  this,  that  the  world, 
when  once  in  existence,  maintains  itself  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course  by  the  efficacy  of  the  laws  which 
have  once  gained  prevalence  in  it.  The  utmost 
that  is  conceded  is,  that  the  origination  of  the 
world  may  be  the  object  of  an  action,  but  not  its 
continuation  after  it  has  once  originated. 

The  foregoing  opinion  only  serves  to  remind  us 
that  we  really  have  already  before  us,  even  with  re- 
spect to  creation,  a  difficulty  of  which,  in  the  ordi- 
nary reflection,  we  are  less  sensible  only  in  relation 
to  this  conception  of  preservation.  To  wit,  the  ques- 
tion is  raised,  in  what  way  God,  in  the  action  of 
his  will,  has  arrived  at  a  decision  concerning  that 
which   should  be  or  should  not  be. 

The  readiest  answer,  —  namely  that  He  has 
summoned  into  actual  existence  only  that  which 
is  in  itself  possible,  —  as  well  as  the  other" 
answer, — that     He     has     summoned     into     actual 


S2  ^  TMIILOSOrilY    OF    KKLIOION. 


existence  the  best  among  many  j)ossible  worlds, 
both  contain  the  thought  that  what  is  good  or 
not  good,  possible  or  not  possible,  has  already 
been  decided  independently  of  the  will  of  God  ; 
and  therefore  that,  after  all,  there  precedes  God, 
the  Supreme  Principle,  a  certain  realm  of  eternal 
truths  as  a  still  higher  Principle,  to  which  He 
together  with  his  activity  is  now  obliged  to 
become    subordinate. 

This  strange  idea  is  not  improved  by  the 
immediate  reply  that,  in  the  use  of  a  distinction 
frequently  made,  we  designate  those  '  eternal 
truths '  merely  as  the  *  content  of  God's  under- 
standing,' and  not  as  a  necessity  foreign  to  Him 
and  which  stands  over  against  Him  objectively. 
No  improvement  of  the  idea  is  attained  so  long 
at  least  as  we  have  in  mind  in  this  connection 
our  own  spiritual  life,  in  which  of  course  all 
these  general  truths  appear  as  something  pro- 
ceeding from  a  higher  power  and  not  connected 
with  our  personality  ;  or,  at  all  events,  as  some- 
thing  not   deducible   from   it. 

Concerning  these  difficulties  we  must  make  the 
following  somewhat  detailed  reflections. 

§  49.  It  has  already  been  observ^ed,  in  dis- 
coursing    of     the     possibility     of     the      reciprocal 


LAWS    NOT    INDEPENDENT    OF    GOD.  83 

actions  of  the  elements  of  the  world,  that  the 
prevalent  method  of  speaking  of  the  "authority 
of  general  laws  of  nature  over  Things  "  has  noth- 
ing properly  corresponding  to  it  in  the  actual 
state   of  the   case. 

Laws  can  exist  only  in  a  twofold  manner :  they 
may  either  exist  at  the  instant  when  they  are 
obeyed,  as  the  activity  of  the  elements  them- 
selves, which  seem  to  follow  them  ;  or,  in  the 
observing  spirits  which  compare  the  events,  as 
conscious  rules  for  the  combination  of  the  ideas, 
by  which  we  (the  observing  spirits)  are  enabled, 
in  accordance  with  the  reality,  to  determine 
beforehand  from  given  states  those  which  suc- 
ceed them. 

On  the  contrary,  laws  never  exist  outside,  betwecft, 
beside,  or  above  the  Things  that  are  to  obey  them. 
And  if  we  ourselves  should  intend  to  assume 
that  a  ghost-like  existence,  of  a  sort  that  is  wholly 
beyond  the  power  of  representation,  belongs  to 
them,  the  question  would  be  left  the  more  un- 
answerable, how  in  that  case  they  went  to  work 
to  secure  obedience  from  the  elements  which  were 
wholly  foreign  to  them. 

This  first  mode  of  representation,  then,  accord- 
ing to  which  God  even  would  have  'found  at 
hand'  a  sum  of  self-existing  truths,  must  be  wholly 
abandoned. 


84  riiiLOSoriiv  of  kkligion. 


§  50.  The  first  modification  of  the  thouirht  we 
are  considerin<,%  to  the  effect  that  the  eternal 
truths  were  nothing  else  but  the  mode  of  the 
action  of  God's  own  nature  and  intelligence,  we 
found,  just  at  the  close  of  the  last  paragraph  but 
one,  to  be   not  altogether  satisfactory. 

To  wit  :  we  find  in  ourselves  such  truths  (as 
for  examjile  the  law  of  identity,  or  the  simple 
geometrical  intuitions,  or  the  fundamental  ethical 
judgments  of  our  conscience),  as  do  not  present 
themselves  to  us,  at  any  rate  when  considered 
individually,  as  something  foreign  to  our  nature, 
but  as  the  mode  of  our  own  experience  or  the 
form  of  our  own  activity.  But  we  find  several  of 
such  truths  within  us,  and  we  find  no  connection 
between  them.  For,  from  the  fact  that  the  propo- 
sition of  identity  is  a  necessity  of  our  thought,  it 
by  no  means  certainly  follows  that  we  must  also 
have  an  intuition  of  space,  or  must  make  a  distinc- 
tion between  good  and  evil.  Hence  the  aggregate 
of  these  truths  seems  to  us  after  all  to  be  some- 
thing foreign  to  our  own  being,  and  not  deducible 
from  it ;  or  at  least  something  whose  origin  from 
it  cannot  be  known. 

If  it  were  thus  with  God,  it  would  seem  to  us 
as  if  He  met  with  these  eternal  truths,  not  to  be 
sure    as    forces   external   to    Himself,    but    as    some- 


ETERNAL    TRUTHS    DO    NOT    LIMIT    GOD.  85 

thing  within  Himself,  which  He  could  regard  only 
in  the  light  of  a  gift  bestowed  upon  Him  as  it 
were. 

Now  we  can  of  course  never  give  a  positive  de- 
scription of  the  manner  in  which  those  truths,  that 
to  our  discernment  are  disparate,  are  united  with 
each  other  in  God,  and  are  'experienced  as  belong- 
ing together  in  the  unity  of  a  single  thought.  But, 
for  all  that,  there  is  no  contradiction  in  the  as- 
sumption that  with  God  it  is  so ;  and  that  only 
we  finite  beings,  who  are  able  to  possess  nothing 
but  fragments  of  the  whole  of  truth,  fail  to  grasp 
the  inner  connection  by  which  these  truths  are 
perfected  into  one  whole. 

§  51.  The  above-mentioned  view  of  the  case  also 
often  proves  unsatisfactory.  The  assumption,  that 
the  eternal  truths  are  the  proper  7nodiis  agendi  of 
the  divine  understanding  itself,  has  always  seemed 
to  many  to  involve  after  all  a  limitation  of  his  un- 
conditionateness  and  omnipotence.  In  such  case 
we  should  not  be  content  with  anything  less  than 
the  statement  that  God  did  not  possess  this  viodus 
agcftdi,  but  that  He  first  bcstozccd  it  upon  Himself. 
Indeed  even  in  such  case  it  might  perhaps  still  be 
doubted,  whether  in  the  choice  of  such  a  viodus 
from    among   many    that   arc    conceivable    and    now 


S6  PHILOSOI'HV    OI-     KKLUJION. 

excluded,  there  were  not  after  all  again  involved  a 
limitation  of  his  unconditionateness,  although  a 
self-chosen   limitation. 

In  one  view  of  the  matter,  however,  it  may  be 
remarked  that  in  this  way  the  conception  of  God 
loses  all  content  whatever ;  and  that,  instead  of 
conceiving  of  that  concrete  Being  to  whom  uncon- 
ditionateness in  respect  to  his  conduct  belongs, 
we  have  made  the  empty  conception  of  uncondi- 
tionateness itself  the  subject  or  the  principle  of 
the  world.  To  do  this  is,  fundamentally  consid- 
ered, just  the  same  mistake  that  is  made  when 
we  content  ourselves  with  the  abstract  expressions, 
the  'One,'  the  'Existent,'  the  'Absolute,'  etc.,  and 
suppose  that  by  them  we  have  expressed  the  Su- 
preme Principle,  instead  of  designating  by  name  or 
representing  that  which  deserves  to  be  acknowledged 
as  the  Real  Principle  of  the  world,  because  it  pos- 
sesses in  virtue  of  its  own  concrete  nature  the 
alleged  predicates. 

But  the  misunderstandings  that  arise  in  this  con- 
nection admit  of  being  analyzed  somewhat  further 
in  detail. 

§  52.  If,  in  the  first  place,  we  see  a  limitation  of 
omnipotence  in  the  fact,  that  even  omnipotence, 
from   its   very   beginning  onward,  follows  a  definite 


CAPACITY    NEVER    INDETERMINATE.  8/ 

modus  ageiidi,  then  we  may  in  the  next  place  be 
reminded  that  we  in  fact  never  mentally  represent 
even  any  finite  'power'  or  'capacity'  as  a  predicate 
which  would  inhere  in  a  Thing  without  connection 
with  its  remaining  ii  predicates  as  an  (n  +  l)th. 
Just  as  little  do  we  represent  such  a  power  as  a 
'  being  able  in  general,'  which  would  still  have  no 
direction  whatever ;  so  that  it  would  only  be  de- 
termined subsequently  by  secondary  circumstances, 
what  sort  of  activity  this  '  being  able '  will  exercise, 
and  with  reference  to  what  objects. 

On  the  contrary  every  *  power '  or  '  capacity '  is 
conceivable  only  as  one  that  is  quite  definitely 
fixed  in  reality.  And  the  abstract  conception  of 
'capacity  in  general,'  which  we  may  form  just  as 
legitimately  as  the  conception  of  '  motion  in  gen- 
eral,' can  just  as  little  signify  something  real  as  can 
the  latter  before  it  is  again  furnished  with  a  '  direc- 
tion'  and  a  'velocity,'  from  which,  in  the  forma- 
tion of  the  general  conception,  the  abstraction  was 
made. 

If  now  this  conception  of  'power'  is  to  be  ex- 
alted to  that  of  'omnipotence,'  it  cannot  be  ac- 
complished by  omitting  every  such  act  of  determi- 
nation as  would  fix  some  modus  agcndi ;  but  only 
by  representing  just  this  modus  as  one  so  compre- 
hensive,   that    all     actual     capacities    and     powers 


88  PHILOSOPHY    OF    KKLIGIOX. 

whatever,  which  appear  in  the  world,  originate  from 
it.  In  that,  we  should  have  substituted  the  mere 
general  conception  of  power  for  the  supreme  actual 
Power.  But  still  further,  omnipotence,  even  in  this 
case,  cannot  be  conceived  of  as  a  predicate  addi- 
tional to  the  rest  of  the  predicates  of  God  ;  but  it 
is  only  an  expression  for  the  efficacy  in  action  of 
just  these  predicates,  and  therefore  of  that  concrete 
nature  of  God  in  which  all  reality  is  comprehended. 

§  53.  We  may  now  be  tempted  for  the  last  time 
to  inquire  :  If  God's  omnipotence  is  only  co-exten- 
sive with  his  nature,  why  then  has  God  this  de- 
terminate nature  a  and  not  another  b  or  c  ?  and 
does  not  the  fact  that  He  is  not  this  b  or  c 
involve  again  a  limitation  of  his  being  ? 

In  support  of  such  thoughts  an  appeal  is  also 
made  perhaps  to  the  celebrated  pfoposition  '' Omiiis 
determinatio  est  ncgatio'' ;  the  meaning  of  which  is 
often  enough  thought  to  be,  that  all  determination 
is  limitation,  because  it  is  the  product  of  the  nega- 
tion of  innumerable  other  possibilities. 

Thus  understood,  the  proposition  would  be 
thoroughly  false.  It  is  only  in  cases  where  a  com- 
pletely disjunctive  judgment  is  already  validated, 
in  accordance  with  which  a  subject  s  must  be 
either  a   or  b  or  c,   that  the  affirmation   of  a   can 


NEGATION    AND    AFFIRMATION.  89 

originate  from  the  negation  of  b  and  c.  And  even 
in  such  cases  this  negation  is  nothing  more  than 
a  reason  for  our  cognition,  from  which  we  conclude 
that  s  is  a,  but  is  not  a  reason  in  reaHty  why  s  is 
actually  a.  That  is  to  say  ;  It  is  not  the  real  de- 
termination, but  our  subjective  certainty  of  its 
existence,  that  follows  from  the  negation  of  other 
possibilities. 

But  in  other  cases,  as  a  rule,  the  above-men- 
tioned proposition  can  only  signify,  not  that  every 
determination  originates  from  a  negation  of  that 
which  is  different  from  it,  but  that  it  is  accessory 
to,  or  consequent  upon,   such  negation. 

If  we  thus  apprehend  the  proposition,  the  doubt 
above  suggested  will  subside  ;  the  doubt,  namely, 
whether  after  all  there  is  not  again  involved  a  limi- 
tation of  a,  in  the  very  fact  that  something  can  now 
no  longer  be  b  or  c,  because  it  is  originally  a.  This 
thought  has  some  significance  for  us  finite  beings, 
to  whom  a  determinate  nature  a  is  given,  beside 
and  outside  of  which  the  natures  p  and  -y  of  other 
beings  —  as  for  example  those  of  other  species  of 
animals  —  are  likewise  met  with  as  actualities.  Since 
then  we  are  unable  to  transpose  ourselves  out  of 
our  own  nature  into  the  p  and  7  foreign  to  us,  this 
incapacity  seems  to  us  a  limitation  which  prevents 
our  enjoyment  of  a  good  that  actually  exists. 


QO  lMlIL()S(>^^^■  oi^  kfaac.ios. 

Hut  the  foregoing  analogy  is  not  transferable 
to  the  nature  of  God.  Fur  ///is  nature  a  is  pre- 
cisely such  an  one  as  is  not  the  product  of  a 
still  higher  nature  M,  among  the  consequences 
of  which  it  would  find  itself  coordinated  with 
the  other  equally  real  products  b  and  c :  and 
at  the  same  time  excluded  from  them.  But  out- 
side of  this  a  nothing  exists  :  a  is  rather  the 
primal  source  of  the  sum-total  of  reality ;  and, 
indeed,  a  source  of  such  sort  that,  owing  to  its 
concrete  nature,  thinking  beings  also  are  met 
with  in  this  realm  of  reality,  who  are  able  to 
distinguish  a  from  a  never-existent,  but  con- 
ceivable non-a  ;  and  who  now  are  able  to  raise 
the  wondrous  question,  why  all  the  world  bears 
the  character  of  this  a  and  not  the  other  char- 
acter of  a  non-a. 

The  noteworthy  capacity  for  denying  in  thought 
what  actually  exists,  —  a  capacity  which  is  itself 
only  a  product  of  the  laws  that  are  valid  in 
actuality  upon  the  basis  of  that  a,  —  misleads 
us  into  the  acceptance  of  this  strange  and  utterly 
unthinkable  idea  :  before  God  was  and  before  the 
world  was,  there  was  already  a  multitude  of  coor- 
dinate, possible  future  Gods  and  worlds  ;  and  there 
was  possible  and  necessary  a  choice  between  them, 
by  which  the   total  character  a   of  the  actual   God, 


GOD  AND  ETERNAL  TRUTH. 


91 


and  of  the  actual  World  was  established ;  but  at 
the  same  time  there  was  by  this  means  intro- 
duced a  limitation  of  both  of  them,  because  now 
they  could  no  longer  be  b  and  c. 

§  54.  We  arrive  at  the  same  result,  if  we 
undertake  to  think  through  one  of  the  two  fol- 
lowing propositions  :  *  God  has  only  recognized  the 
truth '  ;   or,   '  He  has  created  it.' 

■  Arbitrary  statutes  admit  of  being  '  recognized ' 
in  so  far  as  our  transactions  are  willingly  or 
reluctantly  accommodated  to  them.  But  in 
thinking  we  can  only  '  recognize '  as  truth  that 
which  accords  with  the  laws  of  such  thinking,  — 
that  is,  with  its  modus  agcndi.  And  thus  even  God 
would  have  been  able  to  *  recognize  '  any  '  truth  ' 
that  he  met  with,  as  truth,  only  because  it  had 
already  belonged  to  the  intrinsic  nature  of  his  own 
thought. 

Moreover  statutes  of  all  sorts  admit  of  being 
'made,*  and  a  practical  obedience  to  them  may  be 
enforced  :  but  to  make  something  which,  after  it  is 
done,  should  constitute  a  truth,  is  only  possible  in 
case  the  productive  energy  itself  is  already  of  itself 
fulfilling,  as  rules  of  its  own  action,  precisely  the 
same  conditions  as  those  that  are  conditions  of  the  .  • 
truth  to  the  intelligence  associated  with  the  energy. 


c)2  rTTiLOSoriiv  or  religion. 

By  both  paths,  then,  \vc  return  to  the  propo- 
sition, tliat  eternal  truths  are  neither  antecedent 
norms  nor  subsequent  products  of  the  tHvinc  activ- 
ity ;  but  are  nothini;  else  than  the  actual  form 
of  this  very  energizin<;  ;  and  that,  in  the  special 
sense  of  the  word  *  truth,'  they  appear  as  com- 
mands, which  something  not  yet  existent  must 
satisfy,  only  in  our  subjective  reflection,  in  case 
we  attempt  to  bring  the  future  into  combination 
with  the  present. 

§  55.  The  foregoing  considerations  are  con- 
nected with  the  conception  of  the  Preservation 
of  the   world   in   the   following   manner. 

The  common  view  of  nature,  in  modern  times, 
either  asserts  that  God  indeed  created  the  world 
at  the  beginning,  but  after  it  was  created  left  it 
to  itself  and  to  the  further  development  of  the 
general  laws  which  He  established  in  it.  Or,  in 
the  other  case, '  since  the  act  of  creation  can 
never  be  made  apprehensible,  such  act  is  entirely 
left  out  ;  and  it  is  simply  asserted  that  the  world 
which  lies  readv-made  before  us,  is  maintained 
by  the  constant  prevalence  of  its  general  laws, 
and   needs   no   divine   support. 

In  opposition  to  this  the  proposition  of  religion 
is  heard  :   "  Preservation  is  continual  new-creation." 


SUBSTANCE  AS  INDESTRUCTIBLE.        93 

It  is  not  conceivable  that  this  can  be  intended 
to  mean  :  The  world  of  the  next  instant  is,  as  to 
its  content,  entirely  new  and  foreign  to  that  of 
the  preceding  instant.  So  far  from  this,  we 
naturally  accept  the  assumption  that,  in  the  divine 
activity,  there  is  unity  and  coherence ;  and,  for 
this  reason,  the  creative  act  of  the  next  instant 
also  is  a  consequence  of  that  of  the  preceding. 
But,  nevertheless,  the  aforesaid  proposition  would 
deny  that  the  world  of  one  instant  perpetuates 
itself  by  its  own  agency  and  by  its  general  laws 
into  the  next  instant. 

For  that  very  reason  it  will  be  superfluous,  as 
regards  all  special  inquiries  into  the  coherence  of 
the  processes  of  nature,  to  come  back  to  the  'co- 
working  of  God ' ;  and  it  is  sufficient  to  speak  of 
the  consecutive  order  of  nature  which  He  has 
established.  Still,  in  our  idea  of  the  zuhoie,  we 
must  decidedly  guard  against  the  view  which  speaks 
of  an  actual  self-sufficiency  of  nature,  and  which, 
from  this  as  from  a  secure  stand-point,  exercises  a 
negative  criticism  in  opposition  to  the  religious  in- 
tuitions. 

It  must  rather  be  asserted  that  if  corporal  'sub- 
stance '  is  indestructible,  it  is  not  so  by  its  own 
agency  or  in  accordance  with  a  claim  to  the  right 
growing    out    of    its    own    nature,    but    because    the 


94  IMIILOSOPIIV    ()I<-    RKLIGION. 


divine  creative  power  preserves  it  continuously  at 
each  instant ;  and  that  if,  in  the  course  of  nature, 
the  same  forces  always  act  according  to  the  same 
laws,  this  does  not  come  to  pass  because  these 
forces  were  of  themselves  eternal  and  these  laws 
of  themselves  efficient,  but  because  it  lies  within 
the  plan  of  the  divine  efficiency  to  employ,  at  each 
instant  of  the  course  of  the  world,  this  number  of 
homogeneous  actions,  as  means  for  the  production 
of  more  composite  products. 

In  a  word :  The  entire  interior  consistency  of 
the  cohering  order  of  nature,  upon  which  the 
natural  sciences  are  supported,  is  conceded  as  a 
matter  of  fact  ;  but  taken  as  a  whole  and  at  large 
it  is  regarded  as  a  system  of  mutually  condition- 
ing actualities,  utterly  dependent  upon  the  divine 
power ;  so  that  ultimately,  therefore,  the  World 
does  not  preserve  itself  but  is  preserved  by  God. 


CHAPTER   VII. 


OF    GOVERNMENT. 


§  56.  We  can  only  speak  of  Government  in 
case  there  are  elements  that,  with  a  certain  inde- 
pendence of  behavior  on  their  part,  threaten  to 
withdraw  from  a  plan  prescribed  to  them,  which 
the  governing  principle   intends   to  realize. 

The  considerations  to  which  we  last  referred 
therefore  seem  to  leave  no  place  for  the  application 
of  this  conception.  Indeed,  in  proportion  as  these 
considerations  themselves  make  the  preservation 
of  the  world  dependent  upon  the  constant  action 
of  th€  will  of  God,  do  they  obscure  the  thought 
to  which  we  would  firmly  hold;  —  namely,  that  the 
World  is  not  a  mere  immanent  development  of 
God,  but  a  product  of  his  will. 

In  order  that  this  contradiction  may  have  any 
significance,  the  product  of  the  will,  after  it  is 
created,  would  have  to  possess  a  certain  independ- 
ence. Or,  to  use  a  well-known  mode  of  expres- 
sion, the  world  would  have  to  be  'outside'  of  God 
and  not  merely  a  process  'in'   Him. 

We  need  not  adhere  to  these  last  mentioned 
expressions    in   terms   of    space    which   would   lead 


g6  riiiLosopiiv  of  kkligion. 

to  such  endless  and  perfectly  empty  disputes  ;  but 
the  inquiry  must  be  made  as  to  what  must  really 
constitute  that  'mode  of  behavior'  which  it  is  sup- 
posed may  be  figuratively  designated  by  these 
expressions.  And  to  this  question  the  only  answer 
will  probably  be,  that  only  that  Reality  possesses 
the  independence  obviously  here  intended,  which 
is  able  to  have  its  own  states, — such,  that  is,  as 
are  not  immediately  states  of  the  '  Universal  Sub- 
stance' ;  and  to  initiate  processes  which  do  not 
proceed  from  that  Substance. 

If  now  we  consider  how  these  abstract  postulates 
might  be  fulfilled,  we  find  but  one  Reality  which 
actually  fulfils  them  ;    namely,  spiritual  life. 

A  being  which  has  experience  of  itself  as  an 
individual  subject  for  its  own  states,  and  which 
distinguishes  these  states  from  those  of  other 
beings,  may,  it  is  true,  be  nothing  whatever  as  to 
its  entire  existence  but  a  product  of  the  Infinite 
Being.  But  after  it  is  once  in  existence,  it  is,  by 
the  very  form  of  its  existence,  by  this  conscious- 
ness which  places  itself  in  relation  to  itself,  dis- 
tinguished as  an  individual  ego  from  the  very 
Absolute,  that  in  reality  conditions  it,  and  that 
now,  as  posited  over  against  itself,  belongs  to  the 
non-ego.  And  by  this  act,  or  by  this  form  of  its 
existence,    does    it    possess    that    relative    independ- 


NATURE    OF    THE    *  WORLD-STUFF.'  97 

ence    which    we    designate  when   we  say   that   it  is 
'outside'  of  God. 

§  57.  Hence  it  would  follow  (what  we  now 
remark  only  incidentally)  that,  with  respect  to 
our  entire  view  of  the  World,  we  find  ourselves 
in    the    presence  of    an    alternative. 

If  spiritual  life  is  the  only  form  in  which  we 
can  conceive  of  a  reality  that  is  not  a  mere  state 
of  some  other  real  being,  then  our  current  idea 
of  a  motionless,  blind  and  lifeless  '  stuff,'  which 
should  exist  outside  of  us,  can  signify  nothing 
that   is   actual. 

We  must  either  assume,  as  the  Idealist  does, 
that  what  we  regard  as  such  a  '  stuff '  has  no 
existence  externa]  to  spirits,  but  that  the  self- 
coherent  semblance  of  such  a  '  world-stuff '  (com- 
pare especially  J.  G.  Fichte),  is  merely  produced 
within  these  spirits,  and  for  them  only,  by  a 
universal  power  which  works  in  all  spirits.  Or 
else  we  must  conclude,  in  entire  agreement 
with  the  Spiritualists,  that  each  atom  of  that 
which  appears  to  us  as  mere  'stuff,'  is  after  all 
something  better  than  this ;  that  is  to  say,  it 
participates  in  the  most  general  characteristic  of 
the  spiritual  life :  and  this  characteristic  consists 
in    somehow   (either   in  distinct  consciousness  or  in 


98  PHILOSOPHY    OF    RELIGION. 


the  mere  feeling  of  pleasure  and  pain)  *  being  for 
si'/f,'  and  not  in  merely  forming  an  object  of  con- 
templation   for  others. 

It  is  only  the  common  realistic  opinion  on  this 
subject  that  would  seem  to  us  impossible,  accord- 
ing to  which  an  entirely  '  selfless  stuff '  would  be 
just  as  actually  existent  outside  of  us  as  we  are 
wont  commonly  to  represent   it. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  either  of  the  two  fore- 
going views  may  be  formed  into  an  entirely  con- 
sistent apprehension  of  the  world.  But  from  the 
religious  point  of  view,  we  are  not  necessarily 
required    to    choose    between    them. 

§  58.  If  however  there  were  in  existence  noth- 
ing more  than  an  indefinite  number  of  such  inde- 
pendent, created  beings,  there  would  still  be  no 
foundation  for  the  conception  of  a  government  of 
the  world.  It  would  still  be  thinkable,  that  the 
world  might  develop  itself  in  a  perfectly  impertur- 
bable harmony  ;  and  the  problem  for  all  spirits 
would  consist  in  merely  looking  on,  and  in  con- 
sciously and  admiringly  rejoicing  in  this  fact. 

In  point  of  fact,  however,  religious  sentiment 
has  never  been  satisfied  with  this,  but  has  always 
insisted,  at  the  outset  very  obscurely  although  vig- 
orously, that   something   new  also   must   happen   in 


POSSIBILITY    OF    SOMETHING    NEW.  99 

the  world,  —  something  that  is  not  a  mere  conse- 
quence of  what  has  gone  before  ;  —  and  that  there 
must  exist  in  individual  spirits  just  this  capacity 
to  initiate  a  new  series  of  events  ;  and  therefore  in 
brief  a  freedom  of  acting  or  primarily  of  willing, 
by  which  they  separate  themselves  from  the  Uni- 
versal Substance  in  a  still  more  decided  manner 
than  by  their  mere  '  Being  for  self '  as  relatively 
independent   beings. 

In  this  way  then  has  the  problem  originated 
which  leads  to  the  conception  of  a  government. 
For  only  after  this  is  there  any  possibility  of 
events  by  which  the  continuous  realization  of  a 
predeterminate  plan  of  the  world  might  be  inter- 
rupted. 

§  59.  Even  the  above-mentioned  demand  for  free- 
dom would  have  no  religious  significance,  if  it  were 
directed  in  a  merely  formal  way  to  the  possibility 
of  new  beginnings.  For  that  something  new  hap- 
pen in  the  world,  has  of  itself  no  more  value  than 
that  the  whole  course  of  the  world  be  an  unin- 
terrupted, consecutive  process  of  development  ;  in 
which  of  itself  also,  as  we  have  already  previously 
suggested,  there  is  involved  nothing  that  is  worthy 
of  adoration. 

But   we  know   surely,   that   we   only  demand  this 


lOO  rniLosorjiY  or  religion. 

fonnal  'freedom'  because  we  regard  it  as  the  coi- 
d'ltio  si>ic  qua  uoii  for  the  fuli'dment  of  ethical  com- 
mands, whose  obligatory  majesty  we  consider  to  be 
the  most  absolute  certainty  and  one  that  needs 
no  derivation  from  any  other  source  whatever. 

This  conviction  is  the  absolutely  fundamental 
point  upon  which  the  entire  religious  character  of 
our  view  of  the  world  depends.  And  for  him  who 
does  not  directly  experience  and  acknowledge  this, 
all  questions  of  religious  philosophy  are  altogether 
superfluous. 

§  60.  The  ideas  of  freedom  are  not  induced  by 
speculation  ;  but  they  rest  entirely  upon  the  fact 
of  that  penitence  and  self-condemnation  in  which 
we  believe  we  find  the  immediate  assurance  of  the 
possibility,  that  the  choice,  whose  failure  is  now 
repented  of,  might  have  been  reached  even  sooner 
than  it  was. 

This  idea  is,  in  an  obscure  way,  the  first  and 
most  natural,  the  one  that  has  precedence  in  hu- 
man culture.  It  was  not  till  a  later  period  that  the 
scientific  contemplation  of  nature  disclosed  the  con- 
ception of  a  'necessary  causal  connection,'  and  then 
extended  it  over  the  whole  course  of  the  world, 
so  that  now  the  idea  of  freedom  seems  like  a 
strange    exception    and    as    such    is    denied.      It    is 


POSSIBILITY    OF    FREE    CHOICE.  ID  I 


acknowledged  that  even  the  ethical  ideals  origi- 
nate in  the  mechanical  course  of  psychical  develop- 
ment. But  how  much  influence  they  have  upon 
our  action,  depends  entirely  upon  the  involuntary 
states  and  movements  within  our  own  interior 
being.  It  is  therefore  due  to  a  process  of  nature, 
that  the  impulse  to  good  actions,  or  even  to  bad 
actions,  preponderates  within  us  ;  and  the  mechan- 
ical conditions  for  such  result  may  be  strengthened 
by  a  correct  or  by  a  pervejted  education.  But, 
to  be  consistent  and  candid  about  it,  an  action  in 
the  proper  sense,  such  as  would  issue  from  our 
own  ego,  will  then  no  longer  exist.  ,  And  even  the 
inducement  to  all  such  reflection  —  that  is,  the  feel- 
ing of  penitence  —  will  be  regarded  as  a  disagree- 
able state,  about  like  a  feeling  of  sickness ;  and 
it  will  be  maintained  that  the  wish  involved  in 
this  feeling,  —  the  wish  that  one  had  acted  differ- 
ently, —  gives  no  assurance  whatever  of  this  hav- 
ing been  possible  at  an  earlier  moment. 

Such  views  as  the  foregoing  are  not  to  be 
got  at  by  speculation  ;  they  involve  no  contra- 
diction of  cognition.  If  they  are  abandoned,  it 
can  be  done  only  upon  the  basis  of  an  undemon- 
strable  belief,  that  after  all  there  is  directly  dis- 
closed in  the  aforesaid  self-condemnation,  the  pos- 
sibility  of    a    free    choice,  without   which    '  the    bad 


I02  I'HILOSOPHV    OF    RELIGION. 

conscience'  and  the  pain  of  '  jicnitcnce  '  would  con- 
tinue to  be  totally  inexplicable  phenomena  in  a 
rational   order  of   the   world. 

§  61.  We  cannot  think  of  doing  more  than  refute 
the  objections  against  the  possibility  of  the  con- 
ception of  freedom  ;  we  cannot  think  of  proving  its 
actual   validity. 

Now,  in  the  first  place,  it  should  be  remembered 
that  •  freedom  '  and  *  causality '  are  not  absolutely 
opposed  to  each  other,  but  are  compatible  with 
each  other ;  that  is  to  say,  the  former  would  pos- 
tulate the  latter,  but  of  course  the  latter  would 
not  the  former.  For  every  free  beginning  of  an 
action  must  demand  that,  in  the  world  into  which 
it  intends  to  introduce  an  event  a,  all  Things 
cohere  firmly  and  according  to  law ;  so  that  from 
a  only  the  intended  result  z  can  follow,  and  not 
any  other  at  pleasure.  Consequently  *  freedom  '  is 
only  to  be  accepted  in  the  sense  of  an  influence 
upon  a  world  causally  ordered. 

Since  however  the  free  action  ought  to  be  sub- 
jected to  an  ethical  judgment,  it  must  be  added 
that  the  decision  with  respect  also  to  what  is 
'good'  or  'bad,'  is  made  in  entire  independence 
of  the  will.  Therefore,  freedom  also  is  to  be 
accepted    only    in    the    sense    of    a    choice    between 


POSSIBILITY    OF    UNCONDITIONED    CHOICE.         IO3 

what  has  value  and  what  has  not  value,  —  perma- 
nently, and  for   its   own    sake. 

The  further  objection,  —  namely  that  a*  freedom, 
in  the  sense  intended  by  us,  that  is  in  the  disrep- 
utable sense  of  a  completely  '  unconditioned '  choice 
between  a  and  non-a,  is  in  respect  of  the  process 
of  its  action  incomprehensible,  —  is  likely  to  be  mis- 
understood :  it  does  not  raise  a  special  obstacle 
such  as  positively  to  prohibit  the  conception  of 
freedom,  but  simply  and  absolutely  denies  its  valid- 
ity. For,  assuming  that  there  is  freedom,  it  is 
involved  in  its  very  conception,  that  the  process  of 
the  decision  it  makes  cannot  be  a  '  comprehen- 
sible '  one  ;  because  this  would  presuppose  that  the 
decision  follows  as  the  consequence  of  a  succes- 
sion of  reciprocally  conditioning  circumstances,  and 
therefore  does  not  follow  freely.  If  now  offence 
is  still  taken  at  this  incomprehensibility  of  freedom, 
it  may  be  borne  in  mind,  that  the  process  of  causal 
action  would  be  no  less  obscure,  and  the  fact  of 
something  effectuating  something  else,  as  regards 
its  succession  of  events,  just  as  incomprehensible. 

If  then  it  is  still  argued,  that  at  all  events  such 
a  capacity  of  choosing  arbitrarily  and  blindly  be- 
tween a  and  non-a  is  irrational  and  unworthy  of 
any  respect,  it  is  to  be  considered  that  we  in 
fact   neither  commend  nor  venerate  the   'freedom 


i04  rHlI.OSOI'll\     ()!•     KI-.LK.ION. 

that    has    not    yet    decided.      It    is    only    the    '  will 
which  is  no  longer  free,  but  has  made  its  decision, 
that  merits  commendation  or  censure.     *  Freedom 
is  simply  the  conditio  sine  qua  tion  for  the  possibility 
of    the    subsequent    valuation    of    the    determinate 
act    of    willing. 

For  although  we  may  concede  that  it  is  just  the 
volition  itself  which  we  commend  or  censure,  while 
we  do  not  demand  that  this  volition  itself  be  re- 
peated once  more,  still  we  after  all  tacitly  pre- 
suppose in  such  a  case,  that  just  this  '  volition 
from  the  very  outset  has  the  significance  of  a 
decision  sprung  from  'freedom.'  If  this  is  denied 
us,  and  the  will  is  defined  as  an  emotion  which 
originates  mechanically  within  us,  then  we  deny 
that  ethical  predicates  are  at  all  applicable  to  the 
will  as  a  mere   process   of  nature. 

On  the  other  hand  it  is  objected,  that  the  Good 
ought  to  be  chosen  for  its  own  sake,  but  not  in  an 
entirely  arbitrary  manner :  a  blind  freedom  there- 
fore would  be  just  as  little  conducive  to  actions 
which  may  be  judged  ethically.  In  reply  to  this 
it  is  to  he  observed,  that  we  can  never  speak  of  a 
*  blind  '  will ;  since  all  volition  belongs  to  the  same 
spiritual  subject,  w^hich  on  the  other  hand  is  en- 
dowed likewise  with  the  consciousness  of  the  pos- 
sible modes  of    its  action    and  of    their  values.      If 


VARYING    INFLUENCE    OF    WILL.  IO5 


such  a  subject  in  possession  of  this  consciousness 
makes  a  choice,  its  choice  at  all  events  is  not 
*  blind.'  But  there  is  no  necessity  for  apprehending 
the  presence  in  consciousness  of  the  correct  esti- 
mate of  the  possible  modes  of  action  as  at  the 
same  time  a  determining  influence  which  neces- 
sarily  conditioned   the   direction   of  the   will. 

One  difficulty  however  remains.  The  act  of  voli- 
tion, although  itself  not  causally  conditioned,  would 
still,  if  there  is  to  be  any  corresponding  result, 
be  obliged  to  have  a  varying  influence  upon  the 
existing  states  of  the  mind.  And  now  the  ques- 
tion comes,  as  to  the  means  that  determined  the 
intensity  with  which  the  '  freely  '  originated  will 
either  overcomes  the  states  of  passion  that  strug- 
gle against  it,  or  else  yields  to  them.  It  would 
be  a  somewhat  sophistical  piece  of  information 
to  affirm  unqualifiedly  that  only  the  volition,  but 
not  the  accomplishment  of  it  is  free  ;  and  indeed 
to  carry  this  to  such  extent,  that  not  only  the  pos- 
sibility of  the  execution  of  an  external  action  when 
willed  would  be  doubtful,  but  that  even  the  inner 
states  of  the  mind  also  would  form  for  the  will  a 
sort  of  external  world,  in  which  it  could  validate 
itself  only  in  case  the  states  of  the  same  are  more- 
over  in   harmony   with   its   demands. 

In  a  somewhat   indefinite  form   this   thought   ap- 


io6  PHiLOSOiMiv  or  rfligiox. 

pears  in  tlic  splierc  of  religion  :  \vc  pray  God  to 
grant  strength  to  the  well-disposed  but  weak  will ; 
we  therefore  certainly  ascribe  volition  to  the  hu- 
man spirit,  and  only  doubt  about  its  needful 
power. 

A  decisive  judgment  upon  this  question  it  is 
hardly  possible  to  find.  To  assume  an  entirely 
free  'volition'  and  to  include  in  the  conception 
of  it  its  complete  ineffectiveness  seems  almost 
absurd  :  on  the  contrary  the  other  extreme  opin- 
ion is  a  very  bold  one  and  hardly  to  be  accepted  ; 
namely,  that  just  as  the  will  freely  determines  its 
own  direction,  so  also  is  it  able  to  determine  its 
own  intensity,  and  that  it  is  always  the  willing 
spirit's  own  fault,  if  it  has  too  little  intensity  of 
v^olition  to  overcome  the  involuntary  psychical  im- 
pulses to  action. 

§  62.  According  to  the  entire  foregoing  discus- 
sion, acceptance  or  rejection  of  freedom  will  ulti- 
mately be  a  matter  of  decision,  and  not  the  result 
of  a  theoretical  demonstration. 

It  is  only  on  the  assumption,  that  we  do  not 
hold  the  speculative  difficulties  which  we  encounter 
to  be  insuperable,  and  that  we  therefore  believe  in 
the  freedom  of  spiritual  beings,  that  there  is  any 
further  interest  in  discussing  the  conception  of  a 
government  of  the  world. 


GOVERNMENT    AND    PRESERVATION.  IQ/ 

Government,  in  contradistinction  to  Preservation, 
could  only  consist  in  immediate  influences  of  God 
upon  the  order  of  nature,  such  as  were  not  included 
in  the  proper  consequences  of  this  order.  And 
these  influences  could  only  be  occasioned  by  the 
free  actions  which  threaten  to  turn  the  prog- 
ress of  the  world's  course  aside  from  a  prescribed 
line. 

Such  divine  influences  are  comprehended  under 
the  name  of  Miracles. 

In  order  to  estimate  this  conception,  it  must 
not  be  defined  as  an  abolition  of  the  order  of 
nature  in  general,  or  of  the  general  laws  of  na- 
ture. For  then  the  conception  would  not  at  all 
correspond  to  what  we  mean  by  it.  '  General '  sus- 
spension  of  the  'laws  of  nature'  would  only  occa- 
sion a  chaos  which  is  utterly  beyond  the  power 
of  representation. 

The  '  miracle '  however  is  supposed  to  be  a 
definite  event,  in  which,  in  a  single  instance  and 
with  reference  to  definite  things  and  for  definite 
moments,  the  physical  laws  are  invalidated  which, 
contemporaneously  or  previously  and  subsequently, 
continued  to  be  valid  with  respect  to  all  other 
things. 

This  however  means  nothing  but  that  the  nature 
a  of  some  one   element   experiences  a  change   into 


108  PHILOSOPHY    OF    RELIGION. 

a,  by  which  it  now  no  I()nL;cr  falls  under  the  do- 
main  of  the  natural  law  j^-,  but  under  that  of  an- 
other y ;  and  in  consequence  of  this  it  no  longer 
produces  the  ordinary  effect,  but  another  and  ex- 
traordinary one.  According  to  this  definition,  there- 
fore, the  miracle  in  general  would  involve  no 
alteration  whatever  of  the  laws  of  nature,  but 
only  the  change  of  one  or  more  magnitudes  to 
which  those  laws  are  applied. 

Now  it  cannot  be  disputed,  that  such  a  change 
of  the  natures  of  single  elements  by  the  influence 
of  a  divine  intervention  is  just  as  thinkable  as  it 
would  be  if  accomplished  by  the  intervention  of 
another,  and  that  a  physical  force.  And  particu- 
larly under  the  presupposition,  that  the  Things  of 
nature  are  not  independent,  but  are  products  con- 
stantly supported  by  a  divine  power,  does  this 
general  conception  of  the  miracle  contain,  on  the 
one  hand,  all  that  can  be  demanded  in  the  re- 
ligious interest,  and,  on  the  other,  nothing  that 
would  be  theoretically  contradictory  or  impossible. 

§  63.  There  is  no  cause  for  overmuch  rejoicing 
on  account  of  this  proof  of  the  mere  abstract 
conceivableness  of  the  miracle.  On  the  contrary 
it  must  be  lamented,  that  we  lack  every  decisive 
scientific    regulative     for    determining     the     limits, 


MIRACLES    AS    RELATED    TO    SPIRITS.  lOQ 


within  which  wc  may  have  confidence  in  this 
possibility  of  thought,  as  valid  in  actuality.  Only 
very  indefinite  thoughts  upon  this  question  admit 
of  being  presented. 

That  the  order  of  nature  for  its  own  sake  is  in 
need  of  no  corrections,  is  obvious.  And  the 
changes,  which  the  free  actions  of  spirits  are  able 
to  produce  in  it,  are  so  narrowly  limited  and  may 
be  so  easily  compensated  for  by  the  general 
economy  of  nature,  that  even  for  their  sake 
*  miraculous '    interventions    are    incredible. 

Although,  on  the  other  hand,  we  feel  a  certain 
aesthetic  inclination  to  behold  great  crises  of 
history,  in  which  a  new  phase  of  spiritual  devel- 
opment has  its  beginning,  made  glorious  by 
extraordinary  changes  of  physical  conditions  also  ; 
still  we  must  acknowledge  that  we  can  prove 
neither  the  necessity  nor  the  real  benefit  which 
would  result  from  satisfying  our  fancy  by  this 
summons   of   the   miraculous. 

It  seems  therefore,  that  it  is  not  at  all  nature 
directly,  but  primarily  the  inner  life  of  the  world 
of  spirits  only,  that  forms  the  object,  to  which 
immediate  interventions  in  the  government  of  the 
world  could  have  relation  ;  and  this  in  such  manner 
that  the  interventions  would  not  make  use  of  the 
individual  spirits  merely  as   passive   points   of   tran- 


iio  PHii.osopiiv  oi-   Ki:ij(;i()N. 


sition,  but  would  sup})ly  tlicir  own  acti\ity  with 
inducements  nnd  incentives,  which  the  external 
course  of  nature  cannot  offer  them.  Moreover, 
by  means  of  these  inducements  and  incentives 
they  would  succeed,  in  accordance  with  the  ordi- 
nary laws  of  the  spiritual  life,  in  introducing  into 
the  world  new  beginnings  of  spiritual  movement 
that  are  in  conformity  with  the  plan  of  the  world. 
If  in  these  events  we  include  among  others  re- 
ligious visions  also,  then  we  do  not  conceive  them 
to  be,  as  Rationalism  does,  merely  subjective  delu- 
sions to  which  nothing  in  external  nature,  and 
consequently  nothing  whatever  corresponds.  On 
the  contrary,  we  think  of  them  as  products  of  a 
reciprocal  action  of  God  with  individual  spirits  by 
means  of  which  there  is  brought  to  pass  in  them 
an  ideal  appearance  of  a  truly  valid  content ;  and 
this  content  would  gain  nothing  whatever  in  dig- 
nity, value  or  reality,  if  it  were  realized,  not 
merely  as  such  appearance,  but  as  physical  or  ma- 
terial actuality  besides. 

§  64.  Accordingly  it  is  impossible  speculatively 
to  determine,  how  far  within  the  limits  of  proba- 
bility, faith  in  the  applicability  of  the  not  essen- 
tially impossible  conception  of  miracle  ought  to 
be  extended. 


HISTORY    NOT    MERE    DEVELOPMENT.  I  I  I 

The  entire  thought  however,  in  which  the  in- 
clination towards  this  faith  has  its  source,  is  still 
further  in  harmony  with  the  idea  of  a  history  for 
the  world  in  which  we  come  to  participate  with 
God  in  some  common  experience.  And  while 
this  is  something  which  is  determined  in  accord- 
ance with  his  most  general  plan,  it  is  still  in  its 
details  by  no  means  the  mere  result  of  original 
predestination.  It  is  therefore  not  merely  '  de- 
velopment '  according  to  the  law  of  reason  and 
consequent,  but  actual  history  ;  and  this  history  is 
without  exception  found  only  where  general  laws 
or  a  general  plan  are  not  executed  with  perfect 
constancy,  but  in  alternate  action  with  innumerable 
lawless   obstacles  or  free  counteractions. 

This  summing-up  of  actuality  into  a  history  which 
has  beginning,  middle  and  end,  is  very  natural 
to  all  religions.  And  yet  there  are  no  doubt  dif- 
ficulties involved  in  such  an  idea  in  itself  con- 
sidered. 

That  is  to  say,  it  seems  to  us  at  first  as  if  the 
proper  determination  of  actuality  consists  in  the 
historical  actualization  of  a  "  world-aim  "  or  in  the 
struggle  toward  it.  And  with  this  understanding 
of  the  matter,  it  is  altogether  natural  to  regard  the 
creation,  the  history  of  the  world,  and  the  judg- 
ment of  the  world,  as  three  successive  acts  of  such 


112  PHILOSOPHY    OF    RELIGION. 

a  concluded  drama.  But  upon  closer  consideration 
after  all  this  view  is  in  contradiction  to  our 
needs. 

If  the  world  was  created  in  time,  so  that  reckon- 
ing from  this  (present)  moment  a  retrogressive 
cognition  should,  after  a  finite  number  of  steps, 
discover  its  beginning,  then  we  are  troubled  by  the 
emptiness  of  infinite  time  before  this  beginning ; 
and  we  know  of  nothing  with  which  to  fill  it  out. 
For  even  the  thought  of  a  solitary  preexistence  of 
God  is  an  obscure  one,  supposing  that  the  creation 
of  the  world  is  made  to  originate  from  an  act  of 
the  will  of  God,  which  could  have  no  need  of  this 
preparatory  period  either  for  its  origination  or  for 
its  execution. 

Just  so  if  the  judgment  of  the  world  is  the 
conclusion  of  history,  it  certainly  cannot  be  under- 
stood to  mean  that  the  created  actuality  would 
now  vanish  again  into  nothingness.  Rather  is  it 
only  by  this  judgment  of  the  world  that  there  is 
established  an  order  of  things  which  fulfils  the 
aim  of  the  world,  and  which  would  then  naturally 
be  perpetuated  ad  infinitiiui  as  the  actuality  of 
that  which  ought  to  be  ;  —  and  this  without  ex- 
periencing any  further  history  of  that  development, 
which  would  now  be  superfluous. 

Such    considerations    convince    us  that    the    idea 


THE    PERIODS    OF    THE    WORLD.  II3 

of  these  three  successive  periods  of  Beginning, 
Realization  and  Completion  of  an  aim,  —  derived 
as  it  is  from  our  human  endeavors,  —  is  not  ap- 
plicable to  the  totality  of   the  world. 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

OF    THE    CONCEPTION    OF    THE    *  WORLD-AI M.' 

i^  65.  The  conception  of  a  *  world-aim,'  which, 
according  to  the  remarks  we  have  just  made,  would 
not  be  realized  all  at  once  at  the  conclusion  of  a 
history,  but  progressively  in  the  course  of  the 
world,  we  have  simply  introduced  without  any 
question  as  to  its  validity.  Speculatively  it  is  by 
no  means  to  be  demonstrated  ;  it  continues  to  be 
perfectly  possible  to  think  of  the  course  of  the 
world  as  an  entirely  purposeless,  although  more 
or  less  living  development  of  an  Absolute. 

But  religious  feeling  has  an  immediate  evidence 
that  the  case  is  not  so,  and  that  all  the  phenomena 
of  inspiration,  of  adoration,  and  of  the  feeling  of 
obligation  to  an  ideal,  are  not  explicable 'as  casual 
effects  in  the  development  of  a  purposeless  Prin- 
ciple. 

l^ut  if  the  conception  of  a  supreme  aim  for 
the  world  is  once  acknowledged,  then  the  other 
ideas,  which  form  its  necessary  points  of  relation, 
comport  with  it  ;  and  especially  the  idea  of  a  per- 
sonal God,  in  whose  consciousness  and  will  alone 
this  aim,   previous   to   its   full    accomplishment,    can 


PLACE    OF    THE    SUPREME    AIM.  II5 

have  any  actuality  by  means  of  which  it  becomes 
effective  as  guiding  principle  for  the  course  of 
the  world  itself.  To  this  subject  however  we  are 
not  going  to  return.  The  most  urgent  question 
is,  wherein  are   we   to   place   this   *  supreme  aim.' 

§  66.  The  answer  to  the  foregoing  question  is 
to  this  extent  self-evident,  that  naturally  this  aim 
cannot  be  placed  in  the  realization  of  a  fact,  with 
respect  to  which  the  further  question  were  *  possi- 
ble ;  why  just  this,  and  not  other  conceivable 
aims  of  like  nature,  is  to  fill  this  supremely 
exalted  position  in  the  world.  The  aim  must 
obviously  be  that  which  has  supreme  value,  and 
with  respect  to  which  the  aforesaid  question 
becomes    senseless. 

Now  as  to  what  this  aim  is,  the  common,  unphil- 
osophical  religious  view  is  not  at  all  uncertain  : 
nothing  but  the  conception  of  blessedness  seems 
to  it  to  express  this  value,  with  respect  to  which 
it  is  absurd  to  raise  the  question,  why  this  and 
why  nothing  else  constitutes  the  supreme  aim. 
It  may  be  incidentally  remarked,  that  the  exist- 
ence of  a  world  of  spirits  is  connected  with  the 
foregoing  view  as  something  conceivable.  For  only 
such  a  world  could  contain  the  subjects  whose  states 
this  supreme  aim  may  be  conceived  to  be.     On  the 


I  1 6  PHILOSOPHY    OF    KKLKUON. 

Other  hand,  this  view  by  no  means  also  furnishes 
at  once  an  explanation  of  the  existence  of  this 
determinate,  ///animate  wcjrld. 

^  67.  The  above-mentioned  view  is  combated  in 
xain  from  the  side  of  an  ethical  Ri<;orism,  which, 
throu<j^h  its  well-known  undcrx'aluation  of  all  'pleas- 
ure,' always  in  the  })ractical  domain,  regards  noth- 
ing but  disinterested  obedience  to  the  universal 
commands  of  duty  as  ethical  ;  and  therefore  in 
the  religious  domain  also  would  not  in  any  case 
be  disposed  to  acknowdedge  *  supreme  blessedness  ' 
as  the  final  purpose  of  the  world,  —  perhaps  not, 
with  any  readiness,  even  as  a  tolerable  conse- 
quence   of   that   purpose. 

With  respect  to  this  point  we  briefly  remark 
as  follows  :  If  obedience  or  disobedience  to  an 
ethical  law  were  to  occasion  not  a  trace  of  pleas- 
ure or  pain  to  any  sensitive  being  in  the  world, 
—  whether  God,  angels,  or  men,  —  it  would  be 
utterly  incomprehensible,  why  it  is  just  the  obedi- 
ence and  not  the  disobedience  to  the  law  that 
must  have  an  obligatory  force  ;  since  after  all 
the  effects  of  the  two  modes  of  conduct  consist 
only  in  the  production  of  different  states  of  fact, 
one  of  which  would  be  as  indifferent  as  the  other. 

In   a  word,   it   is    impossible    to    understand  what 


THE  NATURE  OF  THE  GOOD.  11/ 

is  to  constitute  the  '  value  '  of  any  action,  if  its 
results  are  not  able  to  produce  some  'Good'  some- 
where in  the  world,  or  to  increase  the  sum  of 
already  existing  '  Good.'  But  while  we  designate 
Things,  States  and  Events  as  *  Good,'  it  is  after 
all  only  in  so  far  as  they  are  means  for  obtain- 
ing the  only  real  and  substantial  'Good';  and 
this  latter  always  exists  only  in  the  pleasure  of 
some  sensitive  spirit,  and  would  vanish  with  the 
world  of  spirits  completely  from  the  realm  of  ac- 
tuality. 

No  Ethics  can  avoid  having  regard  to  a  pur- 
pose that  is  final  and  in  itself  of  absolute  value. 
No  matter  to  what  extent  many  rigorous  systems 
formulate  their  highest  ethical  laws  apparently 
without  any  such  regard,  still,  in  addition  to  the 
assurances  that  they  are  the  highest  laws,  the 
conclusion  must  always  be  supplied  :  What  then 
would  be  the  result,  if  these  laws  were  not  obeyed  ? 

§  68.  The  foregoing  assertions  do  not  degrade 
morals.  It  is  not  meant  by  them,  that  the  direct 
endeavor  after  happiness  —  and  that,  too,  after  one's 
own  happiness  —  should  be  the  ethically  praise- 
worthy motive  of  our  action.  On  this  point  our 
conscience  gives  us  sufficient  instruction  ;  since 
it   interprets   this   endeavor   as    in    itself   considered 


Ii8  rnii.osoi'in-  oi-    kki.kiiox. 


indifferent  and  merely  natural,  but  on  the  con- 
trary interprets  as  ethically  laudable  only  the 
endeavor  to  secure  the  hapj)iness  of  others.  Thus 
(as  might  be  further  proved)  the  command  of 
'  benevolence '  is,  among  all  ethical  commands, 
really  the  fundamental  one  ;  and  only  upon  the 
assumption  of  it  do  all  the  rest  receive  their  ob- 
ligatory value. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  seeking  a  coherent  view 
of  the  world,  we  have  a  speculative  interest  in  the 
fact  that  the  ethical  commands,  which  we  are  able 
in  practice  to  obey  without  any  further  question 
as  to  their  origin,  are  not  wholly  lacking  in  co- 
herence wqth   the    arram^ement   of   the   world. 

That  such  arrangement  therefore  be  reckoned  to 
the  account  of  the  final  purpose  of  blessedness,  is 
a  speculative  claim,  which  we  set  up  in  the  in- 
terest, to  a  certain  extent,  of  our  reverence  for 
the  world,  but  not  for  the  satisfaction  of  our  own 
wishes  for  happiness.  We  are  naturally  unable  to 
avoid  including  our  own  welfare  also  in  this  com- 
prehensive final  purpose. 

The  foregoing  are  perhaps  the  incentives  which 
in  religious  thought  have  led  to  this  doctrine  of 
blessedness.  Fronj  these  incentives  are  distin- 
guished, and  not  to  their  advantage,  at  least  as 
regards    the    intention,    the    philosophical    systems 


BLESSEDNESS    AS    AN    ABSTRACT    NOTION.  II9 

which  only  in  a  practical  way  set  up  claims  upon 
our  obedience  to  universal  ethical  laws,  but  specu- 
latively give  us  no  enlightenment  with  respect  to 
the  ultimate  end,  to  which  properly  this  ceaseless 
expenditure  of  ethical  energy  is  to  lead. 

§  69.  Certainly,  the  laudation  alluded  to  above 
holds  good  only  of  the  intention  and  not  of  the 
performance  of  this  religious  opinion.  It  is  wrecked 
rather  in  the  attempt,  actually  to  deduoe  the  neces- 
sity of  the  pi'escnt  world  from  the  supreme  purpose 
of  blessedness. 

The  first  objection  certainly  might  be  disre- 
garded ;  namely,  why  this  purpose  could  be  accom- 
plished at  all  only  as  a  result  of  a  course  of  the 
world,  and  why  it  could  not  be  accomplished  as 
well  from  the  very  beginning.  At  the  foundation 
of  such  a  question  there  really  lies  the  logical  error 
of  regarding  the  conception  of  '  blessedness '  or  of 
*  pleasure  in  general '  in  this  universal  sense  of  it, 
as  something  realizable.  But  the  *  pleasure '  that 
is  without  content  can  no  more  exist  than  a  sen- 
sation of  'color  in  general,'  which  were  neither 
green  nor  blue.  Every  '  pleasure '  is  rather  an 
altogether  determinate  one,  which  is  distinguished, 
as  to  its  intensity  and  coloring,  from  others,  and  in 
both  respects  is  determined  by  the  nature  of  the 
content  of  which   it   is  an   enjoyment. 


I20  PHILOSOPHY    OF    KKLKilON. 

Hence  it  may  be  made  evident,  that  we  arc 
utterly  unable  to  form  any  real  idea  of  a  blessed- 
ness without  content,  although  we  can  form  the 
name  of  it  ;  that  it  is  capable  of  realization  rather 
only  upon  the  supposition  that  there  are  actual 
relations  of  some  sort,  which  constitute  the  object 
of  enjoyment  in  this  pleasure ;  and,  finally,  that 
even  these  relations  cannot  be  as  they  will,  but 
together  must  form  an  orderly  arrangement  of  the 
world. 

But  no  progress  is  made  in  the  foregoing  way  ; 
the  postulates  which  are  set  up  with  respect  to 
such  an  arrangement  of  the  world,  are  always  after 
all  general  and  abstract.  That  they  had  to  be 
realized  now  by  means  of  just  these  substances, 
forces,  organisms,  and  kinds  of  occurrence,  which 
we  discover  empirically  in  the  world,  is  in  nowise 
to  be  proved. 

Wonder  at  the  fact  that  so  many  other  kinds 
of  existence  were  still  possible,  which  however  do 
not  exist,  can  be  modified  but  imperfectly  by  the 
intimation  that  our  range  of  experience  is  narrow, 
and  that  perhaps  there  are  realized  in  the  extra- 
earthly  world  all  the  possibilities  which  we  miss 
upon  the  surface  of  the  earth.  For  since  we  have 
reason  to  think  that  the  most  general  physical  laws, 
which  are  valid  with  us,  are  valid  also  for  all  distant 


THE    EXISTENCE    OF    EVIL.  121 


parts  of  the  world,  therefore  the  organizations  also 
which  are  there  found  can  only  be  such  as  are  in 
accordance  with  these  laws.  There  always  remains 
as  conceivable,  however,  an  infinite  manifoldness 
that  might  exist,  if  those  laws  were  only  different. 
We  are  therefore  brought  round  to  the  new 
question  :  Why  are  the  laws  of  nature,  which  are 
not  necessities  of  thought  but  empirical,  precisely 
as  they  are  and  not  otherwise  ?  This  question  is 
unanswerable  ;  and  in  our  religious  faith  we  must 
be  content  to  think  of  the  given  world  as  in 
fact  called  to  the  realization  of  the  supreme  pur- 
pose, without  being  able  to  investigate  any  further 
the  grounds  of  this  calling. 

§  70.  The  existence  of  evil  in  the  world  —  and 
that  too  primarily  of  mere  physical  evil  —  brings 
our  general  assumptions  still  further  into  inex- 
plicable   contradiction   with    our  data    of   facts. 

It  is  sufficient  to  indicate  in  a  word,  how  utterly 
fruitless  are  those  ways  of  speaking  which  seek 
to  apologize  for  evil  by  recognizing  it  only  "  in 
particulars,"  but  maintaining  "  the  harmony  of 
the  world  as  a  whole."  One  needs  only  to  reverse 
these  utterances  :  "  On  the  whole  the  world  makes 
a  beautiful  figure  indeed,  but  in  particulars  it  is 
wretched,"  —  in  order  to  understand   that   such   ex- 


122  rillLOSOI'HY    OF    RELIGION. 

pressions  give  cvitlence  merely  of  the  good  inten- 
tion of  the  apology,  but  specify  no  ground  for 
such  an  apology. 

Moreover  the  assertion  of  that  "  harmony  on  the 
whole "  is  in  fact  by  no  means  whatever  to  be 
demonstrated.  We  merely  know  that  the  world 
does  not  perish  on  account  of  its  imperfections, 
but   that   both   it  and  they  continue   together. 

§  71.  All  efforts  to  attain  to  clearness  upon  the 
above-mentioned  subject,  can  only  try  to  apologize 
for  the  evil  that  does  not  admit  of  being  done 
away  with   by  denial. 

The  first  onset  for  this  purpose  consists  in  the 
assumption  that  evil  is  necessary ;  in  other  words 
that  God,  although  having  in  view  only  the  High- 
est Good,  has  nevertheless  been  bound  in  his 
creation  to  laws  which  have  not  permitted  the  un- 
conditioned Good,  but  only  the  choice  of  the  best 
world  among  many,  all  of  which  were  imperfect. 

The  limitation  of  the  divine  Omnipotence  which 
is  involved  in  this  view,  might  be  tolerated  to  a 
certain  extent,  if  the  aforesaid  general  laws  were 
really  understood  to  be  simply  the  eternal  truths, 
which,  as  we  saw,  are  nothing  extraneous  to  God, 
but  are  only  the  proper  modus  agoidi  of  his  own 
spiritual  activity.      But   there    is    nothing  whatever 


THE    ORIGIN    OF    EVIL.  1 23 

% 

in  the  whole  world  by  which  to  prove  that  these 
eternal  truths  were  to  blame  for  the  evils  that 
are  in  the  world.  So  far  as  we  are  in  any  way 
empirically  acquainted  with  the  course  of  things, 
and  arc  able,  according  to  its  analogy,  to  judge 
of  non-realized  possibilities,  an  absolutely  faultless 
world  would  not  be  at  all  inconsistent  with  those 
'eternal  truths.'  The  ground  of  evil,  so  far  as 
we  know,  lies  rather  in  those  special  facts  and 
arrangements,  which  are  in  actual  existence,  but 
instead  of  which  there  might  as  well  be  others 
that  were  also  on  friendly  terms  with  the  afore- 
said truths  and  yet  would  not  lead  to  these  evils. 

Since  now  we  must  attribute  the  establishment 
of  these  special  actualities  to  the  creative  will  of 
God,  the  attempt  in  this  way  to  make  the  origin 
of  evil  independent  of  the  divine  will  would  not 
succeed ;  for  his  omnipotence  would  have  still 
further  to  be  so  limited  that  even  the  actual  ele- 
ments of  the  world  and  their  original  combina- 
tions would  be  regarded  as  something  taken  for 
granted,  in  the  midst  of  which  God  would  have 
to  find  himself  existing,  and  from  which  He  then 
would  have  to  endeavor  to  secure  the  best  result 
still  possible  (Leibnitz). 

This  would  be  not  only  a  degradation  of  our 
conception  of  God   from   a   religious   point  of  view, 


124  rHiLOSoriiv  of  religion. 

but  it  would  also  be  speculatively  fruitless.  For 
in  order  that  the  measurable  influence  upon  the 
world,  which  is  still  attributed  to  such  a  God, 
might  be  able  to  exist  at  all,  a  second  superior 
God  would  have  to  be  assumed,  who,  in  the 
manner  previously  discussed  (§§  i6  ff.),  would  com- 
prehend both  of  these  now  mutually  indifferent 
members  in  one  reciprocal  action,  and  would  pre- 
vail upon  them  to  act  upon  each  other. 

§  72.  After  the  foregoing  explanation  which  is 
intended  as  metaphysical,  there  is  one  of  a  peda- 
gogic sort,  that  regards  evil  as  a  means  of  Good, 
that  is  of  education  and  improvement. 

But  in  the  first  place  this  view  merely  contem- 
plates men,  who  alone  are  capable  of  education. 
But  in  the  animal  world  as  well  physical  evils 
appear  ;  and  that  not  at  all  in  a  sporadic  manner, 
but  so  systematized  that  the  terrible  torture  and 
destruction  of  one  class  of  creatures  by  the  rest 
belongs  directly  to  the  so-called  order  of  Nature. 
No  pedagogic  can  make  this  comprehensible.  We 
can  much  sooner  comprehend  how  earlier  times  in 
despair  over  this  very  fact  set  a  '  bad  Principle ' 
in   a  dualistic  manner  over  against  the  Good. 

But  even  leaving  this  out  of  the  account, — 
any    education    makes    use    of   evil    simply   because 


MORAL    AND    PHYSICAL    EVIL.  1 25 

the  minds  which  it  intends  to  affect,  are  psycho- 
logically so  defectively  organized,  that  without 
this  intrinsically  objectionable  means  the  end 
would  no  longer  be  realized.  If  it  were  applied 
to  the  entire  world,  it  would  lead  back  to  the 
previous  thought  :  God  did  not  have  it  in  his 
power  to  make  the  world  so  perfect  that  it 
would  attain  its  end  without  corrections  by 
means    of    evil. 

§  73.  A  view  which  has  been  elaborated  rather 
in  a  religious  and  mystical  way,  regards  the  mor- 
ally Bad  as  prior  and  physical  evil  as  a  consequence 
of  its  becoming  actual. 

Now  the  circumstance  that  the  truly  Good  was 
not  to  be  actualized  without  the  possibility  of  the 
Bad,  and  therefore  that  the  freedom  of  the  world 
of  spirits  was  to  be  conceded,  we  can  consider 
as  a  necessity  which  need  not  be  foreign  even 
to  God's  own  nature.  But  after  all  we  do  not 
understand,  why  the  bad  disposition  which  entered 
the  world  in  consequence  of  such  freedom  needed 
to  have  any  physical  result  at  all  ;  and  why  the 
danger  which  it  threatened  to  the  undisturbed 
continuance  of  the  world,  was  not  averted  by 
one  of  those  self-compensations,  by  means  of 
which    so    frequently    elsewhere    in    nature    the    be- 


126  riiiLOsoniY  of  relk.ion. 


ginning    of    a    disturbed     equipoise    cancels     itself 


agani. 


The  necessary  existence  of  freedom  would  there- 
fore by  no  means  show  that  the  innocent  must 
suffer  by  its  misuse.  But  in  addition  to  this  also 
the  view  does  not  cover  the  whole  question. 

For  the  further  assumption  that  nature  was 
originally  without  evil  and  that  sin  first  brought 
it  into  the  world,  not  only  lacks  all  empirical 
foundation,  but  is  even  in  itself  considered  un- 
tenable. We  cannot,  just  because  individual  spirits, 
or  even  very  many  of  them,  erred,  regard  '  sin  '  as 
a  unit-principle  or  a  power  which  would  have  a 
legitimate  influence  upon  the  course  of  nature  in 
general  ;  still  less  is  it  to  be  understood,  why  na- 
ture did  not  endeavor  to  overcome  singly  the  dis- 
turbances which  the  sin  that  is  foreign  to  it  had 
introduced,  instead  of  admitting  physical  evils,  as 
a  kind  of  solidaric  totality,  into  the  very  plan  of 
its  operations. 

The  incomprehensibleness  of  the  foregoing  views 
is  not  lessened  by  their  being  proclaimed  with  still 
greater  emphasis  ;  thus,  for  example,  by  speaking 
of  a  •*  voluntary  fall  of  the  entire  creation "  which 
now  extends  '*  the  curse  of  its  imperfection  to  all 
creatures  that  still  spring  from  it."  In  whatever 
way   the   picture   may  be  painted,   to   attribute   this 


EVIL    AN    INSOLVABLE    ENIGMA.  12/ 


act  of  a  'fair  to  the  collective  conception  of  a 
creation  means  after  all  nothing  whatever.  It  is 
intelligible  only  as  regards  each  particular,  indi- 
vidual, free  and  conscious  being.  But  if  we  refer 
it  to  such  a  being,  then  it  is  a  perfect  monstrosity, 
at  variance  with  the  simplest  sense  of  justice,  to 
assume  that  the  consequences  of  this  act  pass 
over,  as  an  inheritance  which  it  is  impossible  to 
shake  off,  to  all  later  generations,  although  they 
are  according  to  their  very  conception  destined 
to  like  'freedom.' 

In  very  different  forms  have  Mythology,  Mysti- 
cism and  Dogmatics  represented  such  a  primaeval 
history  of  the  world.  But  none  of  these  attempts 
has  been   able  to   eliminate    the   aforesaid    manifest 


mcongruities. 


§  74.  The  above-mentioned  incapacity  of  our  spec- 
ulative cognition  for  the  solution  of  this  enigma  of 
evil  had  to  be  very  plainly  expressed.  For  there 
ought  not  to  remain  any  seeming  as  if  there  were,  in 
expressions  which  cannot  be  understood  and  which 
only  commend  themselves  to  the  imagination  through 
intuitive  images,  any  real  speculative  proof  for  the 
correctness  of  the  religious  feeling  upon  which 
rests  our  faith  in  a  good  and  holy  God,  and  in  the 
destination  of  the  world  to  the  attainment  of  a 
blessed  end. 


128  PHILOSOPHY    OF    RELIGION. 

He  who  docs  not  share  this  religious  conviction, 
may,  on  account  of  these  last  considerations  of 
ours,  very  easily  from  a  speculative  point  of  view 
reach  that  Pessimism,  which  is  just  now  the  order 
of  the  day,  and  for  which  there  will  be  on  specu- 
lative grounds  no  refutation.  But  this  Pessimism, 
which  reverts  to  the  thought  of  an  original  energy 
without  will,  that  produces  the  Good  and  the  Bad 
alike  without  design,  is  not  a  profound  view  but  is 
just  that  cheap  and  superficial  kind  of  view,  by 
which  all  enigmas  are  conveniently  disposed  of  — 
by  simply  sacrificing  all  that  is  most  essential  and 
supreme  to  the  unprejudiced  mind. 

In  contrast  with  this  Pessimism,  the  more  diffi- 
cult problem  is  the  firm  confidence  that,  in  spite 
of  all  that  is  incomprehensible  to  us,  the  striving 
after  a  supreme  end  is  at  all  events  extant  in  the 
world.  For  this  confidence  takes  upon  itself  the 
great  and  ever  unavoidable  task  of  always  making 
renewed  attempts  to  fill  the  gap  which  lies  be- 
tween this  content  of  our  faith  and  our  actual 
experiences. 

If  we  call  every  attempt  of  this  sort  in  thought 
or  action  'Religion,'  then  'religion'  is  never  ex- 
actly a  demonstrable  theorem,  but  the  conviction 
of  its  truth  is  a  deed  that  is  to  be  accredited  to 
character. 


CHAPTER   IX. 


RELIGION    AND    MORALITY. 


§  75.  If  there  is  no  speculative  argument  for 
religious  conviction,  still  there  must  be  a  motive 
for  holding  fast  this  conviction.  And  in  fact  an 
appeal  has  constantly  been  made  to  an  'immediate 
inner  experience/  which  attests  the  truth  of  the 
content  of  religion,  as  directly  and  independently 
of  the  intervention  of  logic  as  perception  by  the 
senses  attests  the  reality  of  external  objects.  It 
has  already  been  said  in  the  Introduction  however, 
that  there  by  no  means  exists  an  harmonious 
inner  experience  as  regards  that  divine  order  of 
the  world  which  is  not  perceivable  by  the  senses  ; 
but  rather  that  (compare  also  §  59)  the  only  ele- 
ment common  to  men,  to  which  an  ap^peal  may 
be  made  for  the  confirmation  of  religion,  consists 
in  those  *  utterances  of  the  conscience'  that  pri- 
marily only  say  what  oiigJu  to  be,  and  yet  after 
all  permit  an  indirect  inference  from  this  as  to 
what   is. 

§  76.  There  are  different  ways  of  apprehend- 
ing   this    real    function    of    the   *  conscience '   also. 


I  ;o  PiiiLosornv  or  religion. 


It  must  be  acknowlcd^^cd  that  the  conscience 
is  not,  prior  to  all  experience,  a  coherent  revela- 
tion of  the  commands  to  which  our  future  conduct 
ought  to  conform  ;  the  rather  is  it  like  our  capa- 
city of  cognition.  The  supreme  j)rinciples  to 
which  this  capacity  reduces  its  judgment  of 
Things,  are  also  no  original  ready-made  posses- 
sion of  our  consciousness.  Particular  perceptions 
rather  induce  us,  in  the  first  place,  as  a  sort  of 
immediate  reaction,  to  effect  their  combination  so 
as  to  give  them  a  definite  significance.  It  is 
only  subsequent  reflection  upon  many  such  par- 
ticular cases,  that  shows  us  in  accordance  with 
what  *  principles '  our  conduct,  which  was  pre- 
viously only  instinctive,  has  proceeded.  And 
now  for  the  first  time  are  they  cousciojis  prin- 
ciples, to  which  we  conform  in  our  subsequent 
cognition. 

Just  so  *  conscience  *  is  first  induced,  by  consid- 
ering cases  that  are  quite  definite,  to  pass  par- 
ticular judgments  of  approval  or  disapproval  upon 
actions  which  are  brought  before  it.  It  is  only 
by  reflective  comparison  of  these  particular  judg- 
ments, that  there  is  formed  from  them  those 
general  ethical  precepts,  which  it  is  then  cus- 
tomary to  designate  as  the  *  immediate  voice  of 
conscience.' 


THE    VIEW    OF    EGOISM.  I^I 


§  77.  This  necessary  concession  with  respect  to 
the  psychological  development  of  our  conscience, 
is  now  made  use  of  to  support  in  the  first  place 
a  view,  which  annuls  the  obligatory  value  and  the 
proper  majesty  of  ethical  commands. 

It  is  the  view,  namely,  that  the  sensibility 
which  induces  the  spirit  to  approve  or  disapprove 
of  some  definite  act  itself  rests  in  turn  merely 
upon  the  immediate  well-being  or  ill-being,  which 
the  spirit  experiences  from  it.  When  however 
this  sensibility  proceeds  to  the  formation  of  gen- 
eral propositions,  it  comprises  only  those  maxims, 
constant  obedience  to  which  experience  has  taught 
Becures  on  the  average  the  highest  degree  and 
steadiest  permanence  of  that  well-being  which  is 
at  all  attainable.  All  ethical  commands  accord- 
ingly appear  merely  as  maxims  of  that  Egoism 
which  seeks  its  own  self-preservation  ;  they  appear 
however  as  general  laws  simply  for  the  reason 
that  the  limitation  of  our  cognition  of  the  past, 
present  and  future,  does  not  in  every  case  permit 
that  mode  of  action  which  is  specially  suited  to 
these  different  periods,  for  the  attainment  of  the 
highest  possible  good. 

To  this  entire  mode  of  apprehending  the  sub- 
ject we  must  now  concede  this  one  point, — 
namely,   that  the  mere   experience   of  human   inter- 


132  PHILOSOPHY    OP    KKLICilON. 

course  certainly  may  furnish  us  with  the  concrete 
and  (letcrniinatc  i:)articular  content  of  those  pre- 
cej)ts,  in  conforming  to  which  ethical  behavior 
consists  ;  and  that,  on  the  other  hand,  all  at- 
tempts in  a  reverse  direction  to  deduce  those 
specialized  precepts  from  the  general  conceptions 
of  the  Good,  the  T^thical,  the  Holy,  or  the  Just, 
are  in  vain.  Such  general  conceptions  express 
nothing  whatever  but  the  peculiar  character  of 
the  impression,  which  definite  kinds  of  conduct 
will  make  upon  our  feelings,  as  soon  as  we  shall 
become  acquainted  with  them  :  on  the  other  hand, 
they  do  not  acquaint  us  with  just  those  forms  of 
the  conduct  itself,  to  which  this  impression  will 
apply. 

§  78.  A  disposition  which  insists  upon  endeavor- 
ing to  find  in  ethical  precepts  nothing  but  pru- 
dential maxims  acquired  by  experience,  and  to  find 
back  of  all  actions  nothing  but  egoistic  motives,  can 
in  no  way  be  gainsaid  by  mere  speculation.  So 
much  only  is  clear,  namely,  that  such  an  interpre- 
tation of  moral  commands  is  arbitraiy.  For  in  that 
case  also,  supposing  us  to  assume  that  a  worth 
and  sacredness  of  their  own  belongs  to  these  com- 
mands, everything  w^ould  still  be  exactly  the  same. 
That   is  to  say,  these  commands  would  in    fact    be 


THE    VIEW    OF    EGOISM.  1 33 


the  maxims,  conforming  to  which  produces  the 
greatest  amount  of  happiness.  The  content  more- 
over of  that  which  they  command  would  always 
be  learned  first  by  experience,  as  was  previously 
mentioned.  And  for  just  this  reason  it  would  always 
be  possible  to  represent  them  as  though  they  were 
nothing  more  than  such  lessons  of  experience  with 
respect  to  what  is  expedient. 

But  on  the  other  hand,  he  who  prefers  this 
interpretation  overlooks  the  fact,  that  we  all  of  us 
none  the  less  set  over  against  the  conduct  which 
simply  conforms  to  these  maxims  of  prudence, 
another  of  an  altogether  different  sort,  as  being 
the  only  one  of  value  ;  and  this  latter  conduct  con- 
forms to  these  same  maxims,  although  with  differ- 
ent sentiments  ;  and  indeed  with  such  sentiments 
as  either  have  disinterested  regard  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Good,  in  precisely  the  same  way, 
for  instance,  in  which  we  reverence  beauty  as  having 
objective  value  without  advantage  to  ourselves  — 
or  else  with  such  sentiments  as  find  happiness,  so 
far  as  they  make  the  production  of  it  an  object 
of  pursuit,  only  in  benevolence  towards  others  and 
not    in    selfishness. 

This  also  may  be  denied ;  but  in  denying  it 
there  is  involved  the  denial  of  an  inner  experience, 
upon   the    acknowledgment    of  Which    every  further 


134  PMir.osopnY  OF  religion. 


upwarti  flight  of  religion  depends.  Conversely, 
therefore,  it  will  not  be  possible  to  gainsay  those 
who  are  conscious  of  this  inner  experience. 

§  79.  lUit  even  the  recognition  of  the  peculiar 
worth  and  sacredness  of  ethical  commands  does  not 
lead  at  once  to  a  religions  view  of  the  world  ;  on  the 
contrary  this  recognition,  in  ancient  as  well  as  mod- 
ern times,  has  been  put  in  express  opposition  to 
religious  thought.s,  which  seemed  like  a  needless 
and  false  supplement  to  it.  It  is  not  to  be  denied, 
that  practically  even  this  Stoicism,  or  the  Rational- 
ism which  disdains  any  connection  with  religion, 
may,  by  mere  subordination  to  the  general  demands 
of  morality  and  of  the  course  of  the  world,  furnish 
the  basis  for  a  conduct  of  life  well  deserving  of  rec- 
ognition. But  there  are  involved  in  this  conception 
(compare  §  6'^)  peculiar  speculative  contradictions. 

It  is  maintained  in  the  first  place,  that  all 
thoughts  about  an  origin  at  some  time  or  other, 
or  about  an  ultimate  aim  of  moral  laws,  are  to  be 
avoided,  because  they  could  only  serve  to  corrupt 
the  conception  of  the  peculiar  sacredness  and  un- 
conditioned obligation  of  these  laws,  which  demand 
rather  an  altogether  immediate  recognition  as  being 
absolutely  obligator)\  Worthy  of  respect  as  is  the 
sentiment  which  is*  thus  expressed,  yet   the   specu- 


AN    'UNCONDITIONED    OUGHT.'  I35 


lative  thought,  by  which  it  would  Uke  to  sustain 
itself,  is  utterly  unserviceable.  Laws  that  are  com- 
pletely unconditioned  may  be  conceived  of,  so  far 
forth  as  they  in  fact  govern  all  actuality,  like  the 
laws  of  nature,  and  are  consequently  expressions  of 
a  '  nmst '  which  knows  no  exceptions.  On  the  con- 
trary the  thought  of  an  'unconditioned  Ought,'  that 
is,  of  a  law  to  which  actuality  in  no  wise  of  itself 
corresponds,  is  incomprehensible. 

There  must  be  a  difference  between  the  reality 
of  that  which  oitgJit  to  be  and  of  that  which  ought 
not  to  be ;  and  this  difference  cannot  consist  in 
the  mere  repetition  of  these  two  antithetical  j^redi- 
cates.  Rather  must  the  very  consideration,  that  the 
one  ought  to  be  and  the  other  ought  not  to  be, 
have  a  practical  validity.  In  other  words  and  more 
simply  :  An  unconditioned  '  Ought '  is  unthinkable  ; 
and  only  a  conditioned  Ought  is  possible,  which 
attaches  advantages  and  disadvantages  to  the  ob- 
servance or  non-observance  of  what  is  prescribed. 
These  very  consequences,  however,  may  still  con- 
sist ultimately  only  in  pleasure  or  pain.  And  in 
this  alone. also  consists  the  'absolute  value,'  as  it  is 
called,  which  the  ideals  of  conduct  designated  by 
moral  laws  possess.  A  value,  which  is  valued  by 
no  ojte,  and  therefore  causes  7io  one  pleasure  or 
pain,  is,  according  to  our  previous  explanation 
(§   6"/),   an   essentially   self-contradictory  thought. 


136  rniLOSopiTV  of  rf.ligion. 

Now  the  advantage,  which  must  be  inseparably 
connected  with  the  claim  to  validity  for  the  moral 
laws,  could  be  sought  primarily  in  that  immobility 
of  feeling,  that  atamxyy  which  Stoicism  regards  as 
the  ideal  of  life  for  the  wise  man.  But  if  this  is 
commendable  so  far  as  it  does  not  permit  disturb- 
ance by  the  passions,  still  there  is  little  that  is 
commendable  in  its  consequence,  which  would  also 
exclude  living  enthusiasm  for  the  Good  and  Beauti- 
ful, and  would  virtually  degrade  the  feeling  spirit 
to  the  form  in  which  an  impersonal  substance  ex- 
ists. The  moral  laws,  however,  so  far  as  this 
ataraxy  would  be  attained  by  observing  them,  would 
in  fact  still  be  mere  maxims  of  utility,  which  w^ould 
be  designed  for  the  attainment  of  a  completely  ego- 
istic well-being. 

It  is  manifestly,  however,  not  this  tranquillity 
of  mind  alone  that  has  been  in  view  as  the  ulti- 
mate goal  and  good,  but  the  self-esteem  which  is 
secured  by  observance  of  the  moral  laws.  Now 
this  may  without  doubt  be  very  well  meant,  but 
to  say  the  least  it  is  not  compatible  with  the 
refusal  of  all  further  religious  views.  If  we  regard 
the  individual  personality  as  only  a  product  of 
nature,  which  transiently  appears  and  then  van- 
ishes, it  is  not  possible  to  understand  just  why 
we    attach    any    value    to    the    fact    that    what    we 


PRINCIPLES    OF    ALL    RELIGION.  1 3/ 

revere  as  good  and  holy  must  have  its  realization 
in  just  such  an  'Ego'  as  this.  Self-esteem  also 
would  therefore  be  immediately  intelligible  as  an 
ultimate  goal  only  in  case  it  were  brought  under 
the  conception  of  that  which  ministers  to  our 
egoistic  well-being,  in  the  same  way  as  does 
every  sensuous  satisfaction.  It  would  be  possi- 
ble for  it  to  have  a  different  significance  only  in 
case  our  view  of  our  own  personality,  and  of  its 
position  in  the  totality  of  the  world  be  changed. 

§  80.  The  foregoing  reflections,  which  con- 
fessedly have  not  the  value  of  demonstrations  in 
the  proper  sense,  but  are  merely  intended  to 
make  us  sensible  of  the  connection  by  which 
the  particular  thoughts  here  mentioned,  first  get 
their  complete  satisfaction,  lead  us  now  to  three 
propositions  which  we  may  regard  as  the  character- 
istic convictions  of  every  religious  apprehension,  in 
contradistinction  to  a  merely  intellectual  view  of 
the  world,  —  namely  : 

(i)    Ethical  laws  we  designate  as  the  will  of  God  ; 

(2)  Individual  finite  spirits  we  designate  not  as 
products  of  nature,  but  as  children  of  God  ; 

(3)  Actuality  we  designate  not  as  a  mere  course 
of  the  world,  but  as  a  kingdom  of  God.  These 
three  propositions  are  to  be  elucidated  and  their 
consequences  investigated. 


138  riiiLosoriiY  OF  religion. 

§  81.  The  first  of  tlic  aliov  •-mcntiuncd  j^ropo- 
sitions  has  raised  objections,  which  ultimately 
lead  to  the  well-known  scholastic  alternative :  *  Is 
the  Good  good,  because  God  wills  it  ?  or  does 
He  will  it,  because  it  is  good.-*'  This  point  is 
to  be  decided  according  to  the  analogy  of  the 
similar  question  as  to  the  validity  of  eternal 
truths. 

If  one  would  answer  the  first  member  of  the 
alternative  in  the  affirmative,  the  question  would 
be  asked  :  What  then  is  comprehended  under  the 
thought  of  that  God,  who  appears  here  as  the  sub- 
ject of  this  w^ill  ?  He  would  be  nothing  but  an 
infinite  Power,  as  yet  wholly  devoid  of  content  ; 
and  the  affirmation,  that  He  has  willed  the  Good 
(if  it  meant  a  determination  of  will  issued  in  time, 
quite  as  much  as  if  it  declared  this  will,  to  be  one 
without  beginning  and  eternal)  would  really  be 
precisely  identical  with  the  other  assertion,  — 
namely,  the  Good  is  assumed  to  be  once  for  all  in 
existence,  and  a  *  positing  '  or  *  affirming,'  wholly 
without  origin,  is  the  basis  of  this  assumption. 
It  is  moreover  obvious,  that  every  such  deed  of 
mere  power,  while  it  may  impart  necessity^  cannot 
impart  worth  to  the  command. 

But  then,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  just  as  fruitless 
to    assert    that    God   wills    the   Good   because    it    is 


GOD    THE    INTRINSICALLY    GOOD.  1 39 

— ■ — — — — — ( 

*  intrinsically  good.'  For,  to  say  nothing  about 
the  ambiguity  of  this  latter  expression,  an  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  Good,  which  is  not  a  merely 
enforced  decree  in  subordination  to  a  statute, 
would  after  all  be  possible  only  in  case  the  con- 
tent to  be  acknowledged  already  possesses  for  the 
nature  of  the  acknowledging  spirit  the  truth  and 
the  value  which  is  to  be  awarded  to  it. 

We  are  convinced  therefore,  that  the  above- 
mentioned  alternative  separates  again  two  thoughts, 
which  must  be  thought  together  in  absolute  insep- 
arableness  as  the  expression  of  a  single  fact  ;  and 
that  we  always  run  against  absurdities,  whenever 
we  make  one  of  these  alternatives  the  condition 
for  the  other. 

We  therefore  come  to  the  following  decision : 
God  is  nothing  else  than  that  Will,  whose  con- 
tent and  modes  of  procedure  are  comprehended  in 
our  reflection  as  the  *  intrinsically  Good '  ;  and 
which  may  by  abstraction  be  separated  from  that 
living  form  of  existence  which  it  nowhere  else 
possesses  but  precisely  in  the  real  God.  In  truth, 
however,  such  will  of  God  no  more  follows  from 
his  nature  as  secondary  to  it,  or  precedes  it  as 
primary  to  it,  than  in  motion  —  say  direction  can 
be  antecedent  or  subsequent  to  velocity. 

It  is  therefore   an   entire  mistake   to   object   that 


140  I'liiLosornv  m-    kelihion. 

the  peculiar  majesty  of  moral  laws  suffers  detri- 
ment if  they  are  regarded  as  the  will  of  God.  For 
we  take  this  view  of  the  matter,  not  precisely 
with  the  design  of  laying,  by  the  specification  of 
their  origin,  a  basis  for  that  worth  of  those  com- 
mands which  we  directly  recognize  ;  but  we  do  it 
in  order  to  add  to  this  worth  —  which,  although 
it  stands  on  its  own  foundation,  we  were  neverthe- 
less obliged  to  regard  speculatively  as  an  incom- 
plete thought,  —  this  supplement,  by  which,  as  we 
remarked,  its  worth  is  not  enhanced  but  becomes 
intelligible  and  compatible  with  the  totality  of  our 
view  of  the  world. 

§  82.  As  regards  the  second  proposition  (§  80), 
the  somewhat  sentimental  way  in  which  it  is  ex- 
pressed need  not  deceive  us  with  respect  to  the 
weightiness  of  the  thought.  It  has  a  twofold  mean- 
ing. That  is  to  say,  on  the  one  hand  there  is 
involved  in  it  the  recognition  of  the  finiteness  of 
the  personal  spirit  and  of  its  subjection  to  the 
power  and  wisdom  of  God.  And  herein  is  found 
the  reason  for  that  opposition  which  the  Christian 
Religion  especially  has  expressed  against  the  pride 
of  speculative  systems  of  morality,  that  seek  to 
attain  as  their  ideal  the  self-satisfaction,  self-esteem, 
and  self-righteousness  of  the  'wise  man.' 


RELATION    OF    MAN    TO    GOD.  I4I 

J  — — 

The  other  part  of  this  twofold  meaning  is  the  no 
less  lively  opposition  to  that  depreciation  of  per- 
sonality, which  sees  in  it  merely  a  transient  prod- 
uct of  the  course  of  nature.  The  assertion  is 
therefore  expressed  in  this  connection,  that  there 
exists  between  man  and  God  a  relation  of  piety ; 
that  this  relation  is  always  a  vital  one  ;  and  that 
by  means  of  it  —  but  also  only  by  means  of  it  — 
the  finite  spirit  ceases  to  be  such  absolutely  de- 
pendent product  of  the  course  of  nature. 

The  hope  of  being  loved  by  God,  however,  takes 
the  place  of  mere  self-satisfaction  as  the  Highest 
Good.  Such  approval  by  the  Supreme  Spirit  sup- 
plants the  proud  claim  of  having  one's  satisfaction 
in  one's  own  self-esteem. 

§  83.  With  relation  to  the  third  proposition 
(§  80),  we  have  already  been  obliged  to  confess  that 
we  do  not  know  the  content  and  plan  of  the  divine 
government  of  the  world  :  and  the  consequence  of 
this  with  respect  to  religion  is,  that  the  entire  con- 
sideration of  external  reality  is  withdrawn  from  its 
domain,  and  is  regarded  as  an  object  for  science, 
which  has  to  ascertain  its  consistence  by  methods 
entirely  free  from  prejudice,  and  therefore  not  at 
all  influenced  even  by  religious  considerations. 
This   attitude,   too,   is  distinctive    of   Christianity. 


142  riiiLosoriiv  or  religion. 

The  rclij^ions  of  licathcnisni  possess  a  mythology, 
which  seeks  to  explain  ami  interpret,  in  a  very  cir- 
cumstantial manner,  the  facts  of  reality.  Chris- 
tianity has  no  mythology  and  rests  all  its  reflec- 
tions entireU'  upon  considerations  of  the  spiritual 
world,  of  which  we  have  an  inner  experience. 


CHAPTER    X. 

DOGMAS    AND    CONFESSIONS. 

§  84.  Nothing  more  than  the  content  of  the  three 
propositions  ah-eady  cited  is  in  fact  revealed,  even 
by  the  Christian  Revelation.  To  be  penetrated  by 
their  influence,  and  to  be  voluntarily  subject  to  the 
divine  will,  as  they  require,  constitutes  a  living, 
consolatory  religious  state,  —  or  religion  as  a  condi- 
tion of  mind. 

It  is,  nevertheless,  quite  impossible  to  avert 
attempts  to  transform  this  religious  content,  which 
was  originally  apprehended  only  in  living  presenti- 
ment, into  a  series  of  formulated  and  communicable 
propositions. 

To  such  attempts  we  are  impelled  on  the  one 
side  by  our  own  life-experience,  which  desires  to 
answer  the  doubts  that  have  arisen,  not  always  by 
a  mere  appeal  to  the  same  frame  of  mind,  but  also 
by  convictions  that  enter  upon  the  special  content 
of  the  doubts  raised.  Under  the  name  of  relie:ious 
Mysticism  may  be  summed  up  the  whole  of  these 
attempts  at  theory  which  are  based  exclusively  upon 
one's  own  inner  religious  experience,  and  which 
also    primarily   claim     no    other   validity    than    that 


144  PHILOSOPHY    OF    RELIGION. 


which  exists  for  the  personal  subject  who  finds 
out  of  the  depth  of  his  own  mind  the  desired 
answers  to  those  doubts. 

§  85.  Over  against  this  first  impulse  stands  a 
second.  It  is  essentially  self-contradictory  for  one 
to  stand  alone  with  his  religious  conviction,  since 
it  is  just  this  condition  which  unites  man  to  the 
entire  universe.  Religion  is  not  merely  union  of 
the  individual  with  God,  but  in  and  by  this  union 
it  is  at  the  same  time  union  with  all  other  men. 

In  this  impulse  lies  the  one  respectable  root  of 
religious  Fanaticism.  What  we  acknowledge  as  the 
Supreme,  would  not  be  such  Supreme,  unless  it 
were  acknowledged  by  all.  Hence  now  there  fol- 
lows, not  the  warrant  to  be  sure  to  force  one's 
subjective  views  upon  others,  but  rather  that  need 
of  a  religious  community  —  now  so  frequently  mis- 
taken—  within  which  each  one  finds  again,  not 
indeed  the  complete  content  of  his  own  individual 
mysticism,  but  at  least  the  outlines  of  the  convic- 
tion to  which  he  is  able  to  subordinate  or  to  attach 
his  own. 

Such  therefore  is  the  necessity  of  generally  ac- 
cepted Dogmas  and  Symbols. 


TWOFOLD    DESIGN    OF    DOGMA.  1 45 

§  86.  Without  doubt  the  historic  development 
of  such  thoughts  will  embrace  the  content  of 
religion  more  completely  than  the  life-experience 
of  an  individual  ;  although  this  latter  pervades  with 
greater  intensity  that  which  has  once  become  ob- 
ject of  such  personal  experience. 

Generally  accepted  objective  dogmas  will  there- 
fore have  the  twofold  design,  —  on  the  one  hand, 
to  hold  fast  those  solutions  of  doubt  which  have 
been  gained  in  the  course  of  time ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  to  designate  certain  outlines  of  thought 
beyond  which  our  subjective  fancies  are  not  to  go 
without  exposing  themselves  to  error. 

According  to  our  previous  considerations,  no  one 
of  these  dogmas  would  be,  properly  speaking,  a 
speculatively  or  scientifically  conclusive  answer  to 
a  proposed  question  ;  they  would  all  be  mere  sym- 
bols rather,  which  acknowledge  the  existence  of 
an  enigma  and  which  by  means  of  an  insufficient 
figurative  designation  only  fix  the  limits  of  that 
range  of  thoughts,  beyond  which  the  fulfilment 
of  such  postulates  must  not  be  sought. 

It  would  therefore  be  reckoned  a  mistake  for  us 
to  demand  of  the  one  who  purposes  to  belong  to  a 
religious  community,  an  obligation  binding  him  to 
the  literal  purport  of  such  dogmas.  It  is  just  ac- 
cording to  their  literal  purport  that  they  cannot  be 


146  IMIILOSOrHV    OK     RKLIGION. 


objects  of  a  confession  or  non-confession  at  all.  In 
order  that  this  question  of  confession  may  be  raised, 
the  dogmas  need  at  all  times  an  interpretation  of 
their  real  meaning,  —  a  meaning  which  they  always 
indicate  but  imperfectly,  by  figures  or  symbols. 
Such  interpretation  however  is  not  given  objec- 
tively, but  each  individual  is  in  fact  to  find  it  by 
the  activity  of  his  own  mind. 

It  appears  therefore  that  the  only  question  to 
be  put  to  the  one  who  proposes  to  belong  to  a 
religious  community  is,  whether  he  in  his  own 
heart  experiences  and  confesses  a  religious  truth, 
which  admits  of  being  comprehended  as  the  im- 
port of  this  objectively  formulated  dogma,  and 
which  it  is  worth  while  to  have  acknowledged 
in  this  particular  form  as  a  bond  of  union  for 
the  religious   conviction   of  a   collective   body. 

§  87.  It  may  be  objected,  that  there  is  involved 
in  this  a  sort  of  dissimulation.  But  above  all 
things  we  do  not  maintain  that  religion  and  its 
dogmas  are  obligatory  'only  for  the  uncultivated.' 
The  truth  of  religion  rather  is  absolutely  valid  for 
all  alike ;  on  the  contrary,  the  speculative  expres- 
sions which  have  been  discovered  for  it,  are  alto- 
gether inadequate.  And  for  just  this  reason  it  is 
permitted  to  agree   upon  a  formula,  to  which   each 


INEXPRESSIBLE    BUT    TRUE    RELATIONS.  I47 


one  gives  that  theoretical  construction  by  which 
he  beUeves  its  essential  meaning  is  best  compre- 
hended. 

In  other  departments  of  life  also  we  are  not 
able  to  discard  methods  of  apprehending  the 
world,  which  within  the  sphere  of  philosophy  we 
nevertheless  recognize  as  inadequate.  The  exist- 
ence of  a  space-world  outside  of  us,  the  atoms,  and 
the  forces  of  matter,  —  all  these  are  ideas,  without 
the  use  of  which  not  only  the  common  understand- 
ing, but  even  philosophy,  which  denies  their  cor- 
rectness, would  not  be  at  all  able  to  find  its  way 
in  its  observation  and  treatment  of  the  external 
world.  In  all  these  cases  it  is  not  so  much 
that  we  get  at  the  truth,  as  that  we  get  at  such 
an  intuitive  ^ seeniing'  as  is  able  to  make  intelli- 
gible to  us  the  essentially  inexpressible,  but  true 
relations  of  the  Actual. 

Just  so  in  the  case  of  religion  it  is  not  re- 
quired that  there  be  found  a  speculatively  unob- 
jectionable expression  for  that  which  is  essentially 
Transcendent,  but  that  we  have  figurative  expres- 
sions to  which  the  mind  may  attach  the  same 
feelings  that  are  appropriate  to  the  proper  con- 
tent  of  religion. 

Now  it  is  of  course  to  be  conceded  that  we 
could    speak    as    simply   as    we    do,    only    in    case 


I4«^  PHILOSOPHY    OF    RELIGION, 


these  formulated  tlo^nias  were  first  to  be  estab- 
lished. They  arc  however  already  in  existence, 
and  historically  considered  they  are  surely  not  in 
all  cases  so  perfected,  that  they  admit  of  no  mis- 
understanding as  to  their  true  sense.  Hut  still 
this  affords  no  reason  for  a  wilful  separation  from 
those  circles  which  acknowledge  the  dogmas ;  it 
only  involves  a  summons  not  to  make  of  them 
subjects  for  theoretic  instruction,  as  well  as  a 
problem  of  pastoral  wisdom  in  combating  the 
evils    of    a    false    interpretation. 

§  88.  The  attempts  at  theory  may  be  reduced  to 
three  divisions,  the  first  of  which  only,  Theology  in 
the  narrower  sense,  is  sufTiciently  accessible  to  phi- 
losophy. 

We  have  endeavored  in  the  preceding  discussion 
to  show,  what  more  precise  determinations  of  the 
Divine  Being  philosophy  admits,  what  it  excludes, 
and  finally  what  it  demands,  without  being  able  to 
present  them  in  the  form  of  adequate  conceptions. 
As  the  total  result  of  our  discussion  we  repeat, 
that  faith  in  a  personal  God  contradicts  none  of 
those  metaphysical  convictions  which  we  are  com- 
pelled to  maintain  ;  that,  on  the  contrary,  those 
assertions  are  entirely  without  foundation  which, 
with  decided   incredulity  as   regards    all    that  is  re- 


THEOLOGY    AND    THE    RELIGIOUS    LIFE.  I49 


ligious  and  with  frivolous  credulousness  as  regards 
the  theories  fashionable  in  physical  science,  conceive 
of  an  origin  for  spiritual  life  from  the  forces  of 
mere  matter ;  and,  finally,  that  the  charge  of  an- 
thropomorphism is  entirely  unjust,  for  the  distinc- 
tions between  the  infinite  and  the  finite  spirit  are 
by  no  means  overlooked.  But  it  is  certainly  foolish 
to  prefer  to  assign  the  Supreme  Principle  of  the 
world  to  an  unconscious  blind  substratum,  the  con- 
ception of  which  is  for  us,  strictly  speaking,  some- 
thing completely  dark  and  inscrutable. 

§  89.  Further  speculations  —  as  for  example  con- 
cerning the  Trinity  —  would  be,  as  regards  the 
religious  life,  matters  of  complete  indifference,  but 
for  the  fact  that  they  have  been  brought  into  con- 
nection with  the  position  toward  God,  which  the 
human  race  has  come  to  occupy  by  means  of  the 
establishment  or  revelation  of  religion.  The  con- 
sideration in  general  of  this  position  forms  a  sec- 
ond grand  object  of  religious  theories. 

According  to  the  conviction  maintained  in  this 
discussion  as  to  the  constant  activity  of  God  in  the 
world  and  upon  individual  spirits  ;  and  considering 
our  acknowledged  ignorance  of  the  precise  plan 
which  the  divine  government  follows  ;  there  is  noth- 
ing whatever  that  stands  in  opposition  to  the  further 


I  5;0  IMIILOSOIMU     (►!•     KKI.ICIU.N. 


conviction  lliat  (iod,  at  particular  moments  and 
in  particular  persons,  may  ha\c  stood  nearer  to 
humanity,  or  may  have  revealed  himself  at  such 
moments  and  in  such  persons  in  a  more  eminent 
way   than   at   otlier  moments  and   in   other  persons. 

If  therefore  reverence  for  the  founder  of  our 
religion  designates  him  as  *  Son  of  God,'  no  se- 
rious objection  to  the  essential  tliought  which  is 
expressed  by  this  term  is,  in  view  of  the  j)reced- 
ing  paragraph,  tenable  ;  it  is  even  without  doubt 
legitimate  to  regard  the  relation  in  which  he  stood 
to  God,  as  absolutely  unique  not  only  as  to  degree 
but   also   as  to   its   essential   quality. 

But  no  one  can  discover  an  adequate  expression 
for  that  which  would  exactly  correspond  to  the  con- 
notation of  such  a  term  (diescn  Intentionen).  Since 
then  Christ  after  all  cannot  be  *  God's  Son  '  in  the 
literal  sense,  but  the  true  meaning  of  this  figura- 
tive expression  admits  of  no  authentic  interpreta- 
tion whatever,  this  entire  proposition  is  not  at 
all  adapted  for  the  formation  of  a  speculative 
dogma  ;  and  he  who  assents  to  it  in  fact  expresses 
merely  his  conviction  of  the  unique  value  which 
Christ  has  for  him,  and  which  Christ's  relation  to 
God  has  for  humanity,  without  however  being  able 
precisely  to  define  either  of  them. 


SATISFACTION    AND    REDEMPTION.  I51 

§  90.  He  who  in  an  unprejudiced  way  allows 
the  teaching  of  Christ  and  the  history  of  Christ's 
life  to  influence  his  mind,  without  analyzing  this 
impression,  may  be  convinced  that  an  infinitely 
valuable  and  unique  act  has  occurred  here  on  earth 
for  the  salvation  of  humanity.  But  the  attempts 
to  settle  speculatively  the  content  and  value  of 
this  fact,  do  not  as  a  whole  lead  to  the  end 
designed. 

It  is  impossible  to  speak  of  God's  honor  as  re- 
ceiving *  satisfaction  '  through  the  sacrificial  death 
of  a  single  person,  for  the  injury  done  it  by  the 
sin  of  man.  For  such  a  view,  aside  from  its  some- 
what crude  conception  of  God,  is  based  upon  the 
altogether  impossible  conception  of  a  solidaric 
unity  of  the  human  race  and  of  the  possibility 
of  a  transfer  of  its  guilt  and  obligation  to  a  single 
representative. 

The  more  humane  ideas  of  a  '  Reconciliation  '  or 
a  *  Redemption  '  —  at  least  the  latter  of  them  — 
leave  it  undetermined  from  whom  it  is,  precisely, 
that  humanity  beholds  itself  delivered  by  this 
ransom.  It  could  not  well  be  God,  but  must 
rather  be  the  order  of  natural  law,  which  has 
connected  sin  with  our  finiteness  and  condemna- 
tion with  our  sin. 

Now    we    know    that    we    are    redeemed    neither 


152  rini.osoi'HV  of  kklk.ion. 

from  physical  evils  nor  from  the  possibility  of  sin. 
The  only  thing  left  therefore  as  the  practically 
effective  result  of  redemption  is  the  content  of  a 
faith  revealed  and  proffered  to  us,  which  redeems 
us  from  the  distress  and  wretchedness  of  Creation, 
in  so  far  as  it  teaches  us  to  regard  all  evil  as  only 
a  divine  trial  ;  teaches  us,  however,  to  regard  the 
whole  of  the  earthly  life,  not  to  be  sure  as  insig- 
nificant, nor  yet  as  an  irrevocable  finality,  but  as  a 
state  of  preparation,  for  the  errors  of  which  there 
is  in  the  divine  grace  a  redemption  which  we  are 
not   in  the  least  able  speculatively  to  define. 

All  further  speculations  which  attach  themselves 
to  this  subject  —  as,  for  exaniple,  about  the  origin 
of  sin  and  about  its  consequences  —  are  perfectly 
useless  as  regards  the  religious  life. 

§  91.  Even  the  third  division  of  such  specula- 
tions, which  we  may  sum  up  as  Eschatology, 
does  not  admit  of  being  cultivated  speculatively. 
The  earthly  future  of  the  human  race  as  well  as 
the  nature  of  our  immortality  and  of  the  retri- 
bution which  the  final  judgment  will  bring,  are 
entirely  beyond  the  reach  of  any  concrete  por- 
trayal. And  in  this  connection  the  Humanism 
of  modern  times  has  in  fact  become  entirely  dis- 
used to  such   concrete  representations,  and  has  be- 


NECESSITY    FOR    A    RELIGIOUS    COMMUNITY.        1 53 

come  satisfied,  as  it  must  be,  with  maintaining 
the  general  faith  in  continued  existence  and  in 
a  constant  process  of  perfection,  as  well  as  in  a 
retribution  ;  and  in  just  this  way  it  has  shown 
that  for  a  truly  religious  life  there  is  really  no 
necessity  whatever  for  that  vast  sum  of  knowl- 
edges which  dogmatics,  with  much  liability  to 
misunderstanding,  assumes  as  necessary  to  such  a 
life. 

§  92.  Mention  was  previously  made  of  the  value 
attaching  to  the  necessity  that  one  shall  not  stand 
alone  in  his  religious  convictions.  The  value  of 
this  is  the  more  enhanced  on  account  of  the  fact 
that  the  content  of  these  very  convictions  them- 
selves consists  in  faith  in  an  uninterrupted  union 
of  men  with  each  other  and  with  God,  into  which 
it  is  possible  for  every  one  to  enter  by  his  own 
free  choice. 

If  we  call  this  communion  the  invisible  Church, 
then  the  visible  Church,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
certainly  nothing  more  than  a  human  institution 
of  the  company  of  believers  :  partly  for  fellowship 
in  the  worship  of  God,  partly  for  the  regulation 
of  its  earthly  affairs  in  agreement  with  the  de- 
mands   of    its    faith.      But    every    pretension    which 


154  PHILOSOPHY    OF    RKLIGION. 

such  visible  Church  mi<;ht  advance,  not  merely  to 
teach  the  way  to  eternal  salvation  and  to  guide 
to  it,  but  to  open  and  to  shut  this  way  by  virtue 
of  its  own  power,  is  quite  unfounded.  As  for  the 
rest,  the  Church,  like  every  other  institution,  must 
not  fall  into  a  condition  of  opposition  to  the  regu- 
lations of  the  State  ;  although  we  cannot  regard  it 
as  a  happy  expression  to  say  that  the  Church 
must  be  subjected  to  these  regulations  in  anything 
else  but  external  matters  of  an  altogether  indiffer- 
ent character.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  evil  of 
the  present  time  —  and  of  course  has  its  historic 
conditions  —  that  the  State  as  such  is  compelled 
to  exist  without  any  religious  foundation  and  that 
it  believes  it  has  no  need  of  any. 

But  the  complete  unity  of  the  State  in  religious 
matters  also,  would  of  course  presuppose  that  two 
hostile  parties  should  return  to  modesty;  —  namely, 
that  theological  learning  on  the  one  side,  and  irre- 
ligious natural  science  on  the  other,  should  not 
assert  that  they  have  exact  knowledge  about  so 
very  much  which  they  neither  do  know  nor  can 
know ;  it  would  therefore  presuppose  that,  in  the 
recognition  of  divine  mysteries  which  are  left  to 
the  interpretation  of  each  individual  believing  mind, 
and    of    general    ethical    precepts    concerning    the 


THE    END    OF    CONTROVERSY.  1 55 

meaning  of  which  moreover  there  exists  no  con- 
troversy, the  religious  life  may  unfold  itself  in 
accordance  with  the  motto  :  In  7iecessariis  unitas^ 
in  dubiis  libertas^   in  omnibus  caritas. 


INDEX. 


INDEX 


-•o«- 


Absolute,  the  One  Being,  32  f. ;  relation  of  Things  to,  33  f. ;  Determinations 
of,  35  f. ;  Spinoza's  view  of,  38  ;  as  personal  Spirit,  43  f.,  55  f.,  68  ;  and 
therefore  conscious,  66  f. ;  none  besides  God,  83  f. ;  course  of  the  world 
related  to,  114  f. 

Action,  between  elements,  25  f. ;  of  Things  on  each  other,  30  f. 

Argument,  the  Ontological,  8  f. ;  the  Cosmological,  10  f.;  the  Teleological, 

Attributes,  of  God,  45  f. 

B. 

Being,  God  as  the  Most  Perfect,  9  f. ;  as  the  necessary,  10  f. ;  and  uncon- 
ditioned, 13  f.,  55  f. ;  intelligent,  21 ;  the  Absolute,  32  f. ;  Unity  of,  52  f. 
Blessedness,  as  the  supreme  end,  118  f. 


C. 

Christ,  as  Son  of  God,  150  f. ;  relation  to  humanity,  150. 

Cliurch,  visible  and  invisible,  153 ;  relation  of,  to  State,  153. 

Conscience,  function  of,  129  f.;  development  of,  131  f. 

Consciousness,  belongs  to  Personality,  56  f. ;  conception  of,  56;  origin  of, 

57  f. ;  involves  self-identical  Ego,  59  f.,  62 ;  feeling  necessary  to,  60  f. 
Contingent,  events,  as,  10  f. 
Creation,  conception  of,  71  f. ;  Divine  will  in,  73  f. ;  not  necessarily  deed, 

74  f.,  79  f. ;  "  out  of  Nothing,"  79 ;  no  process  of,  79  f. 


Design,  conscious  in  Nature,  17  f. 

Development,  not  creation,  71  f.,  79. 

Dogmas,  necessity  of,  143  f. ;  subscription  to,  145;  limits  of,  147. 

Dualism,  in  philosophy,  39;  as  to  origin  of  evil,  124. 


l6o  INDEX. 


Ego,  unites  elements,  30;  idea  of,  59  f.,  63,  64  ;  correlative  to  non-ego,  62  f. 
End,  conformity  to  an,  16  f.,  iS  f. ;  in  the  worlds  history,  inf.,  114;  the 

supreme,  115  f.,  118. 
Eschatolog^,  not  a  matter  for  speculation,  152. 

Ethics,  relation  of,  to  the  idea  of  value,  117;  and  of  expediency,  132 1 
Evil,  apologies  for,  121  f. ;  origin  of,  124,  126. 

F. 

Faith,  as  organ  of  Religion,  i  f. 
Fall,  conception  of  a,  126  f. 
Fanaticism,  origin  of,  144. 

Feeling,  gioups  of  the  religious,  5  f. ;  necessary  to  self-consciousness,  60  f. 
Fichte,  on  "  world-stufif,"  97. 

Force,  conception  of,  in  Nature,  17  f^  20  f.;  blind  and  unconscious,  40. 
Freedom,  a   condition  of  Government,  99;   not  speculatively  defensible, 
100  f.,  102,  106;  objections  to,  103. 

G. 

God,  proof  of  his  existence,  8  f. ;  ontological  argument  for,  8  f. ;  cosmo- 
logical  argument  for,  10  f.;  as  unconditioned,  13  f.;  teleolog^cal  argu- 
ment for,  15  f.,  22  f.,  24  f. ;  as  Supreme  Intelligence,  21 ;  Unity  of,  45  f. ; 
Unchangeableness  of,  46  f.,  52  f. ;  Omnipresence  of,  47  f. ;  Omnipotence 
of,  49  f.,  86  f.,  88;  Eternity  of,  51  f . ;  Personality  of,  55  f.,  68  f. ;  as  Cre- 
ator, 70,  79;  productive  will  of,  73  f.,  79  f.,  139;  no  Principle  antecedent 
to,  82,  90 ;  relation  of  truth  to,  84  f.,  91  f. ;  government  of,  95  f. 

Good,  idea  of  the  highest,  122,  133,  141;  as  compatible  with  Evil,  124;  rela- 
tion to  the  Divine  Will,  138  f. 

Government,  the  Divine,  95  f.;  conditions  of,  98  f.,  106;  distinguished 
from  Preservation,  107  ;  by  intervention,  109  f. 

I. 

Intelligence,  in  Nature,  21 ;  inhering  in  Things,  24  f. 


Law,  not  above  Things,  83 ;  nor  antecedent  to  God,  83  f.,  88  f. 
Leibnitz,  best  possible  world  of,  123. 


INDEX.  l6l 


M. 

Materialism,  its  account  of  self-consciousness,  57. 

Matter,  contrasted  with  Spirit,  35  f.,  37,  38. 

Metaphysic,  Postulates  derived  from,  30  f.,  52.  * 

Miracle,   the   conception  of,  107  f. ;   abstract   conceivableness  of,  108  f. ; 

extent  not  speculatively  determined,  no  f. 
Mysticism,  origin  of,  143. 


N. 

Nature,  elements  and  forces  of,  18  f. ;  blind  course  of,  21  f.,  47. 
Necessary,  conception  of  the,  10,  12  f. 


Omnipotence,  meaning  of  the  Divine,  49,  86f,,88;  never  in  the  abstract, 

87  f. ;  modus  agendi  of,  122. 
Ought,  idea  of  the,  135  f. 


P. 

Pantheism,  38. 

Personality,  conception  of,  55  f. ;  of  the  Absolute,  55,  68 ;  a  self-conscious 

^go.  59^'.  62  f.,  64 ;  perfect  only  when  infinite  68  f. 
Pessimism,  128. 

Philosophy,  legitimate  place  of,  i  f. 
Power,  conception  of,  87  f. 

Preservation,  of  the  World,  81  f,  92  f. ;  as  new  creation,  92  f. 
Principle,  the  absolute,  35 ;  and  the  supreme,  149. 
Providence,  in  organism,  22  f. 


Eeason,  organ  of  Religion,  i  f. ;  necessarily  self-conscious,  39  f. 

Redemption,  idea  of,  151  f. 

Keligion,  as  related  to  Reason,  if.,  6;  and  scientific  cognition,  4f. ; 
involves  experience,  5  ;  feelings  of,  5  f. ;  relation  to  morals,  129  f. ;  first 
principles  of,  137;  the  Christian,  140;  the  communion  of,  145. 

Rigorism,  an  ethical,  116  f. 


1 62  INPKX. 


S. 

Schelling,  38. 

Science,  nature  of  its  cognitions,  4. 

Sensations,  origin  of,  36. 

Sin,  origin  of,  in  a  Fall,  126  f. 

Spinoza,  38. 

Spirit,  contrasted   with  Matter,  35  f.,  38;   always  self-conscious,  39,  56  f.; 

and  personal,  41  f. ;  the  Infinite,  66;  finite  spirits,  67  f.,  96. 
Spiritualism,  the  philosophical,  39. 
Stoicism,  its  wise  man,  136. 

T. 

Theology,  relation  to  philosophy,  148. 

Things,  properties  of,  16  f.;  as  intelligent,  24  f. ;  homogeneous  and  con- 
nected, 29  f.,  31 ;  influence  of,  on  each  other,  30  f. ;  as  modifications  of 
the  Absolute,  32^,34,67;  spiritual  susceptibility  of,  37;  cannot  have 
""'•y,  53  ;  as  subject  to  law ,  83. 

Time,  not  self-subsisting  form,  51  f. 

Trinity,  doctrine  of,  149. 

Truth,  as  related  to  God,  84  f.,  91  f. 


U. 

Unconditioned,  conception  of  the,  13  f. 
Universe,  origin  of,  17  f.,  28;  elements  of,  27  f.,  28  f. 


W. 

Will,  the    Divine  in   creation,  73  f. ;    the   human,  75,  104 ;    modus  agendi 

unknown,  'j'j  ;  the  free,  104  f. 
World,  relation  of,  to  God,  70,  81,  94,  95. 


ADVERTISEMENTS 


ETHICAL    SERIES 

UNDER     THE     EDITORIAL    SUPERVISION    OF 

E.  HERSHEY  SNEATH, 
A  ssisiant  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  Yale  University. 

The  primary  object  of  the  Series  is  to  facilitate  the  study  of  the 
History  of  Ethics  in  colleges.  This  History  will  be  in  the  form  of  a 
series  of  small  volumes,  each  devoted  to  the  presentation  of  a  represen- 
tative system  of  Modern  Ethics  in  selections  from  the  original  works. 
The  selections  will  be  accompanied  by  Notes,  and  prefaced  by  a  brief 
biographical  sketch  of  the  author,  a  statement  of  the  relation  of  his 
system  to  preceding  and  subsequent  ethical  thought,  a  brief  exposition 
of  the  system,  and  a  bibliography. 

The  following  volumes  of  the  Series  are  now  ready : 

The  Ethics  of  Hume.  By  J.  H.  Hyslop,  Professor  of  Logic  and 
Ethics  in  Columbia  University.  i2mo.  Cloth.  275  pages.  For 
introduction,  $1.00. 

The  present  volume  contains  the  whole  of  the  third  book  of  the 
Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  and  such  portions  of  the  second  book  as 
throw  light  upon  or  are  connected  with  Hume's  moral  theory. 

The  analysis  and  criticism  of  his  system  follows  lines  somewhat 
different  from  that  of  Green,  and  are  designed  to  present  Hume  in 
another  light.  In  all  respects  it  is  hoped  that  the  volume  may  prove 
helpful  to  those  who  wish  to  study  the  ethical  system  of  Kant's 
predecessor. 

The  Ethics  of  Hegel.  Translated  Selections  from  his  "Rechtsphi- 
losophie."  With  an  Introduction  by  J.  Macbride  Sterrett, 
Professor  of  Philosophy  in  the  Columbian  University,  Washing- 
ton, D.C.     i2mo.    Cloth.    216  pages.     For  introduction,  $1.00. 

The  great  revival  of  interest  and  work  in  the  department  of  Ethics 
during  the  present  quarter  of  a  century  has  had  its  chief  inspiration 
and  source  in  the  idealistic  philosophy  of  Germany.  Of  this  philosophy 
Hegel  was  the  culmination  and  crown.  Apart  from  the  empirical  evo- 
lutionary school,  nearly  all  the  prominent  writers  on  Ethics  in  England 
have  been  following  quite  the  spirit  and  substance  of  Hegel. 

The  Ethics  of  Hobbes.  As  contained  in  Selections  from  his  Works. 
With  an  Introduction  by  E.  Hershey  Sneath,  Assistant  Pro- 
fessor of  Philosophy  in  Yale  University.  i2mo.  Cloth.  349 
pages.     For  introduction, 


GINN   &  COMPANY,   Publishers, 

Boston.  New  York.  Chicago.  Atlanta.  Dallas. 


Induct  I  vj^   Logic 

By    WM.    G.    BALLANTINE, 
President  of  Oberlin  College. 


12mo.  Cloth,  viii-f- 174  pages.  For  introduction,  80  cents. 

Although  this  is  preeminently  a  scientific  age,  surprisingly 
little  attention  is  given  in  our  colleges  and  universities  to  the  study 
of  inductive  logic.  The  neglect  is  probably  due  to  the  lack  of  a 
satisfactory  text-book.  Such  manuals  as  are  found  are  hardly 
more  than  meager  abridgments  of  some  chapters  of  the  great 
but  unequal  work  of  Mill. 

It  is  the  aim  of  this  book  to  present,  within  reasonable 
compass,  a  fresh  and  independent  statement  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  inductive  logic,  consistently  carried  out  in  detail  and 
amply  illustrated  by  extracts  from  a  wide  range  of  philosophical 
and  scientific  writers.  The  best  modern  teachers  make  large  use 
of  the  library  and,  while  setting  forth  their  own  views,  seek  to 
acquaint  their  students  with  the  literature  of  the  subject  and  the 
history  of  opinion.  It  is  believed  that  these  numerous  quotations 
from  Bacon,  Mill,  Darwin,  Helmholtz,  G.  F.  Wright,  and  others, 
while  exactly  in  point  as  illustrations  and  elucidations,  will  also 
be  found  strikingly  interesting  in  themselves  and  highly  useful  in 
familiarizing  the  reader  with  the  phraseology,  literary  styles  and 
modes  of  thinking  of  those  eminent  authorities. 

Teachers  of  inductive  logic  will  be  pleased  to  find  here  a 
simple  account  of  the  relations  of  induction  and  deduction  which 
discards  the  notion  of  two  separate  realms  of  thought  in  one  of 
which  it  is,  and  in  the  other  is  not,  legitimate  to  draw  a  conclusion 
wider  than  the  premises.  The  classification  of  inductions  under 
three  heads,  as  primary,  secondary  and  mixed,  clears  away  the 
confusions  which  have  arisen  from  the  attempt  to  bring  all  induc- 
tions under  a  single  definition.  The  doctrine  of  Causation  is  treated 
with  great  thoroughness,  but  the  notion  of  cause  is  not  made,  as 
in  Mill's  system,  the  root  of  the  whole  theory  of  induction. 


GINN    &    COMPANY,    PUBLISHERS, 

Boston.  New   York.  Chicago.  .A^tlanta. 


iw'it'JjM'^*''   Seminary   Libraries 


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